A fire at a Waimarama barn yesterday is being treated as suspicious.
Emergency Services, including trucks from Hastings Fire Station, Waimarama, Havelock North Volunteer Fire Brigade, and Heretaunga Rural Fire, were called to a barn on Waitangi Rd at about 6.30pm.
Hastings District deputy principal rural fire officer Gordon Foster said they believed the fire's origins were suspicious because the barn was unoccupied and without power. A police scene guard would be at Waitangi Rd overnight and police would be investigating in the morning, he said yesterday.
When services left the scene at about 10pm yesterday the structure was still standing but Mr Foster said it would not be safe to go into. Fire services fought the blaze for about an hour and a half and the fire spread to a 50m by 50m area of nearby vegetation.
Hawke's Bay Fire service area commander Chris Nicoll said reports of people inside the barn were later confirmed not to be true.
