Smoke coming from the single apartment fire in the Pukehīnau flats on Sunday. Photo: Oscar Burgin
The manager of a council owned apartment in Wellington, that had one unit destroyed by a blaze, has praised working smoke alarms for alerting fire-fighters to stop it spreading.
A blaze damaged two apartments at the eight storey Pukehīnau flats on Sunday afternoon.
Eight fire trucks, an aerial and a command unit were in attendance to the fire that broke out on the third floor on Brooklyn Road.
Residents were able to return to their rooms on Sunday afternoon, while those in the two affected flats stayed in temporary accommodation.
Te Toi Mahana general manager Daniel Tai said fires in the flats weren't a rare occurrence.
"Someone will just leave the stove on unattended and forgot to turn it off, and quite often it's just contained to a certain area of the units.
"And we have fires like this probably... it's not uncommon given the size of our portfolio," Tai said.
He said there's working smoke alarms in all the apartments.
"It worked well yesterday, the fire alarm set off the signal to the fire service as well so everything went as planned," Tai said.
He said a cleaner had been onsite since Sunday afternoon and expected an update on Monday on the state of the two rooms impacted.
"There's one destroyed by the fire and there's a flat directly below that has some water damage."
"The one below that was water damaged, I think they'll probably be away for two to three days," Tai said.
He said the rest of the residents in the apartments were all doing well after being able to return to their units on Sunday afternoon.
Daniel Tai said he was yet to receive the cause of the blaze by Fire and Emergency.
Fire and Emergency said their investigation is still ongoing into the cause of the blaze.
The Pukehīnau flats houses 50 social housing tenants.
It's run by Te Toi Mahana which is a charitable housing trust on behalf of the council.
Sign up for Ngā Pitopito Kōrero, a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.
