Post by Roadhog on Jan 6, 2009 19:24:26 GMT 12
A Dargaville business owner looked on helplessly as his Victoria St west shop and several neighbouring buildings were destroyed by fire.
Ken Foster, owner of Foster's Home Decorating was visibly upset as he watched his furniture shop going up in flames at around 7.30pm on Monday, January 5.
He says the business he and his wife Elain had worked hard to build up over many years and now run with the couple's two sons, was just a blazing inferno with an estimated stock loss of $500,000 and the building containing it, believed to be around $1.5 million.
"My whole life's in there mate and we'd just about done 26 years," he told the Dargaville and Districts News. Mr Foster says the couple bought the building in 1994, having moved in from premises across the road.
They then built it up to an up-market furniture store and Resene colour shop. He says he would be discussing with his family the possibility of starting again.
"We will have to see if we can rebuild it, we'll see what happens" he says.
Mr Foster says the building was insured for replacement value.
Police and fire safety officials held a media conference at the Dargaville Police Station later, where Dargaville Volunteer Fire Brigade chief fire officer Mitch King said the brigade received multiple calls saying that there was a building on fire between Victoria and Normanby Sts and on arrival fire fighters found an interiors store well ablaze where the fire is believed to have started.
"Due to the verocity and size of the fire it was unable to be contained and more fire trucks and crews were needed from several centres around Kaipara and from as far away as Whangarei and Maungaturoto, turning the incident into a fifth alarm, with a 1000 square metre area engulfed in flames," he said.
Around 100 fire personel, plus Kaipara District Council and St John Ambulance staff, with police containing the surrounding area, keeping the public at bay.
Mr King says the fire is the biggest the town has seen since the mid-1960s, and it is believed that around five business premises believed to be aged around 70 to 80 years old, have been destroyed.
He says a significant structural collapse occurred with the second level facade falling onto the street of Fosters Home Decorating shop. Mr King says if the buildings had had heat sensors and sprinklers installed this would have made a "huge difference to the outcome".
He says the lack of these fire safety devices was not just an issue in Dargaville but all over the country. Business owners' decisions not to have them was often a cost factor.
Fire officials say it took fire fighters a good two and a half hours to get the blaze under control and fire crews would continue to dampen down hot spots overnight.
There were no injuries and one person living in a flat above one of the shops, was escorted to safety. Victoria St west is expected to be blocked off to vehicular and foot traffic between Edward St and Hokianga Rd while the fire is under investigation.
Two men in their teens were arrested during the emergency, one for climbing onto the roof of the nearby Northern Wairoa Hotel and the other for obstructing police.
Constable Ewen Cumming of the Dargaville police says one of the men was "rubbernecking" on the hotel roof and had unnecessarily compromised the safety of police staff, while the other man was obstructing police who were trying to deal with public safety.
"They were idiots, because the reality is, it was a great big dirty fire and they could have been killed and if they want to kill themselves that's fine but they don't need to endanger anyone else," he says.
Emergency service officials championed the quick action of staff from the nearby large historic Northern Wairoa Hotel after smoke started getting thicker.
They said hotel staff went from door to door of the hotel accommodation area to ensure hotel visitors vacated the building in case the fire spread further.
Elleigh Jackson, an assistant at the nearby Blockbuster video store told the Dargaville and Districts News that she smelt smoke just before police arrived and told her to vacate the store.
"As I was leaving the store I saw the front windows of Foster's store cracking and yellow smoke billowing up inside," she says.
