KEY POINTS:
Hundreds of staff carried on working inside Auckland City Council's headquarters in Aotea Square yesterday, unaware the building was on fire.
A heat-detection sprinkler system had not set off alarms but firefighters were alerted when 12 people called 111 to report seeing smoke from the fire.
Auckland's acting deputy chief fire officer Quin Webster also had a prime view of the action.
When he heard about the fire shortly before 10am he headed straight back to his Pitt St office, looked out the window and saw brown smoke billowing from the top floor of the 18-storey council building.
He jumped into his Fire Service vehicle and headed towards the fire - joining up to 60 other firefighters and fire police. Firefighters had to smash a manual alarm switch to evacuate about 300 staff. They then climbed the stairs to reach the small "lift motor room" where the fire was taking hold on a switchboard which controls the lifts.
Mr Webster said fire safety officers were looking into how the fire started and why alarms did not sound.
"We're aware the sprinkler system didn't operate. There was a lot of smoke. We're investigating why it didn't operate."
But he wasn't worried over the lack of warning.
"Essentially the fire wasn't big enough and hot enough to set the sprinkler system off. It did produce a lot of smoke as opposed to heat.
"As far as I'm aware that building meets all the criteria. We have no information to say that it didn't."
Damage to the lift control room, which is about 4m by 8m in size, was restricted to the switchboard where it was thought an electrical fault had occurred.
