Unattended meal started fatal fire, police say

MAARTEN HOLL/The Dominion Post

UNITED IN GRIEF: Neighbours, friends and family leave the scene of the Foxton fire after the bodies of a three-year-old girl and a young woman were removed from the burnt-out house.

The burnt-out Foxton house.

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A meal left unattended on a stove-top is believed to have caused a house fire that claimed two lives in Foxton.

An examination had found the fire started in the kitchen dining area, police said.

It was was not believed to have been suspicious.

"At this stage the most likely cause is unattended cooking on the stove-top,'' spokeswoman Kim Perks said.

"I want you Mummy, I have a sore chest" were the last words a young mother heard from her three-year-old daughter before the toddler died in the fire.

Lesharn Kiri-Leigh Taitoko, 3, and her mother's friend, Atarina Emma Robinson, 22, from Waiouru, died in the blaze which began in the Hulke St house in Foxton about 2.15am yesterday.

The little girl's 24-year-old mother escaped the fire through a lounge room window after being pulled to safety by two neighbours.

Her screams of "My baby, my baby" as she stood on the front lawn woke the neighbourhood.

Manawatu assistant area fire commander Rodger Calder said the house had three smoke alarms but only one appeared to be working.

"It did wake them ...," he said.

Lesharn and Ms Robinson were awake and had struggled to escape the house, he said. "They were trying to get out."

Mr Calder said the fire proved that fire alarms did work and helped save lives. "But [people] have to remember to make sure they are working smoke alarms."

About 70 friends and family gathered outside the burnt-out house yesterday to pray and comfort each other.

The group stood for almost two hours while the scene was made safe enough for them to grieve where the bodies lay on the front lawn.

They sang and performed a haka as the dead were carried into waiting hearses, and walked down the street to follow the coffins being driven away.

Neighbour Sherry Miller said she was first alerted to the fire when her husband spotted a glow through a window. "But it was the scream that got to me. I just knew it was that little girl," she said. "She [the mother] just kept saying, 'My baby'."

The house was well alight when her husband went to offer help.

The fire was so close that the windows on her home heated up "so hot you couldn't touch them". "When [firefighters] kicked the door in it just went up like you wouldn't believe. What can you say? There was nothing we could do."

One of the first people on the scene said the distraught mother told her she could hear her daughter yelling "I want you Mummy, I have a sore chest" but she could not get back to her.

Another neighbour, Tui Wicks, said she also woke to the mother's screams which "sounded like she was right there in my room".

She first mistook the sound of explosions as gunfire. "There were two really loud explosions."

Mr Calder said fire officers had been offered counselling because of the "nature of the fire".

The cause of the blaze is yet to be established, however it is not considered suspicious. Fire crews from Foxton, Foxton Beach, Shannon, Himatangi and Palmerston North battled the blaze, which was put out about 3.30am.

- © Fairfax NZ News