A BAD MASTER

Mal Frost’s dad Ian was proud of his brand new 65-inch TV – but he never got to watch it.

Fire destroyed his TV, his house, and took his life. Mal, himself a firefighter, still reels from the impact of his father’s death three years ago – but the firefighter in him acknowledges this tragedy is an object lesson in the speed and brutality of a house fire and how vital it is for householders to be aware of the need for working smoke alarms, escape routes and what to do if faced with an out-of-control blaze.

“Dad rang me a couple of days before he died and said: ‘Guess what? I’ve got a 65-inch TV on the wall – want to come round and watch the All Blacks on Saturday night?’ He was very proud of it – but I’d already committed to something else. In the end, he went out on Saturday night to watch the game elsewhere. The fire happened early the next morning – he never got to watch his TV.”

Mal says it was a “freakish” fire. Investigators at Ian’s Foxton Beach home concluded that it started with heat radiating from a nail in the chimney flue – even though Ian, 84, had not lit a fire that night. 

Mal, 59, lives in nearby Bunnythorpe where he is an experienced station officer for the local fire brigade. As befits the father of a seasoned firefighter, Ian seemed to have done everything right. He had working smoke alarms, the chimney where the fire started had been swept and cleaned and he knew what his escape route would be if a fire broke out.

Ian was no frail 84-year-old. He was active, mobile and quite capable of dealing with the stairs in his two-storey home. Before his partner died, Ian would head off for weeks on end in camper van journeys around New Zealand.

But he couldn’t outrun this fire. Mal says his father had come down in the early morning to use the downstairs toilet. Whether Ian had heard the fire or his well-placed smoke alarms had sounded, no one knows for sure – but Ian opened a door, fuelling an already intense blaze with oxygen.

Ian made it to the back door, unbolting it, but the flames overtook him. It would have been, says Mal, a painful death. “If you hold an empty bag of potato chips over a flame, it will crumple into a ball. That’s what happens to your lungs.

“They are cruel things, fires – like the old saying about it being a good servant but a bad master. In the right conditions, a fire can double in intensity every nine seconds.”

“People must go to their local station and pick up a kit,” says Mal. “They have to draw a diagram of the house and make sure every member knows how to get out and where to assemble. In a fire, get down, get low, and get out.”

When he heard the callout to his dad’s house, Mal grabbed his helmet and other firefighting gear. When he arrived at the fire, he was greeted by a firefighter colleague. “When I said it was my dad’s house, he went as white as a sheet and said, ‘Oh, I am so sorry…’ and I knew my dad wasn’t coming out of that house.”

There’s one final irony which emphasises the vicious speed of fires like this – Ian’s house was five doors down from the Foxton Beach fire station.

That, says Mal, is about two lengths of fire hose away.

They found Angela Dain’s body in the kitchen, covered by the fridge door which had blown off when the intense fire made the fridge explode. Six-year-old Baelee Dain was found at her bedroom door. They died in their house in Christchurch in July 2009. There were smoke alarms present but the fire was so hot, they were completely destroyed. No one could tell whether they had sounded the alarm or not.

“We were due to go to stay with them in three days for the school holidays,” says sister Susan Woods, still mourning the tragic loss.

They’d had no escape route; their rented house was a bungalow, renovated so the big front door entrance was turned into a small office space. The front door was blocked off; Angela and Baelee had to enter and leave the house by the back door. The only way out for Baelee was the big sash windows – too big for a six-year-old; she was overcome by smoke.

“It’s made me paranoid about escape routes,” says Susan. “My kids (Emily, then aged 8, and Ruby, then aged 4) have had it drummed into them at home and, even if they stay at a friend’s house, they have to map out a way out of the building and know how to get out the windows. Smoke alarms are so important. Even when we are staying at motels, I take some with me. If my girls are staying at a friend’s house and there are no smoke alarms, I go and buy some. Fire can kill you so quickly, you need escape routes and you need alarms.”

Dave Wills was so rocked by his grandmother’s death in a house fire that he became a volunteer firefighter. Since then, he’s seen his fair share of other people’s heartbreak and misery and he’s grown an unshakeable belief in the theory of Oh Yes, It Certainly Can Happen To You and the correct use and placement of smoke alarms.

His nana, Marie Wills, was in her 80s and in bed asleep when fire erupted in her home at Waikanae Beach in August 1999. Investigators couldn’t pin down the exact cause beyond the fire starting in the kitchen, though unattended cooking or an appliance failure were ruled out. Marie had just the one, lonely smoke alarm; no one knows whether it finally triggered or Marie was woken by the sound of the kitchen windows blowing out with the flames.

“She woke up and stood up into the smoke – most people don’t realise that few people burn to death in fires; it’s the smoke that gets you,” says Dave. “She made for the bedroom door but then turned back, picked up the bedside phone and tried to dial out, before collapsing against the bed, where the firefighters found her.”

Marie’s single smoke alarm in the hall may not have activated until quite late in the piece, investigators thought, because of the direction of the spread of the fire.

 It was, says Dave, a haunting and surreal experience seeing his nana’s body after he raced round. So haunting that Dave joined the Silverstream volunteer fire brigade where he still helps and holds strong views: “It’s absolutely critical to invest in long-life photo-electric smoke alarms and it is critical to have the right number in the right locations – generally speaking in every sleeping area, the living room, hallways and outside the kitchen.”