A young Wellington boy was quick to react when he saw smoke coming from a local cafe. Hirini Whakamoe was at home watching the TV show ‘Fireman Sam’, when he started to notice smoke coming from Wellington cafe, Beach Babylon. Quick as a flash, he raced over to the phone and said to his grandmother that he needed to ‘call Fireman Sam’.
The boy was at his grandmother Christine Kershaw’s house on Wellington waterfront when they noticed the large amount smoke coming from Oriental Parade. ”He was watching Fireman Sam at the time and raced over and grabbed the phone and said that he had to ring Fireman Sam now.” The budding fireman then put on his fireman hat and went with Kershaw to find out what was happening. He was quite over-awed to find about 10 fire trucks outside Beach Babylon, with crews battling a kitchen fire in the popular eatery.
He went very shy when he got the chance to meet senior station officer John Mansford, but did get some stickers for his hat, she said. “He was in seventh heaven really. He’s not going to take that hat off anytime soon.”
Bedroom Smoke Alarms Saved Precious Seconds
Like most homes, smoke alarms are placed in the hallway. Maurice had also installed smoke alarms in the bedrooms and this turned out to be one of the best decisions he could have ever made. Because of this decision, his daughter was alerted much earlier to the electrical fire that had started in her bedroom upstairs. The significance of being alerted within 60 seconds between 120 seconds is hard to emphasis enough.
You can watch this video by the New Zealand Fire Service that shows just how fast a fire can spread. There is simply no comparison between a fire alight for 60 seconds and one that has been burning for 120 seconds.
This letter was provided by Maurice and family after their home caught fire in Upper Hutt last February. Although it is never pleasant to hear of these type of events, we were happy and proud that our CAVIUS smoke alarms played a part in ensuring the occupant survived and damage to the home was minimised. Thank you Maurice for letting us share your story.
8th March
Hello, On February 29th of this year we sadly experienced a small house fire in one of our bedrooms on our top floor. There are 5 bedrooms on this level. We host international students and our daughter and our granddaughter along with ourselves all sleep on this level. Luckily this fire was during the day and the only person at home was our daughter, she was downstairs having lunch. The fire was in her room. At approximately 1:00pm she was alerted to the fire by a smoke alarm sounding off. By the time she realised what was happening another alarm was squawking. She ran to the bottom of the stairs and saw smoke at ceiling level, she should have really called the fire department, but ran upstairs to investigate, her bedroom door was open along with her windows and the very slight breeze was pushing the smoke further into the house. On entering her room her curtains were alight along with bedding and the flames were licking the ceiling. Our daughter did not panic but (some would say) stupidly fought the fire with water and managed to extinguish the fire. I had recently installed Cavius Smoke Alarms to all our bedrooms and we firmly believe that if we had not taken these steps the fire would have been greater, with the possibility of a total loss. There were other smoke alarms in the hall way, but by placing these modern nonintrusive Cavius alarms in the bedrooms we have received an early indication of fire. And they are very loud. The fire was caused by a pedestal fan that was going, the power cord of this fan burst into flames. We intend to now install Cavius Smoke Alarms to all our downstairs rooms. They are such a small cost to protect your largest investment. Maurice