KEY POINTS:
As small fires continued to smoulder today at the site of Saturday's fatal coolstore blast on the outskirts of Hamilton, the Fire Service prepared to bury one of its own, Senior Station Officer Derek Lovell.
Mr Lovell, 49, died in Waikato Hospital on Saturday night after a blast ripped through the Icepak Coolstores complex in Tamahere on the southern outskirts of Hamilton.
Seven other firefighters were hurt and six are still in hospital in Auckland or Hamilton. However, some of the injured firefighters want to be at Mr Lovell's funeral in Hamilton tomorrow if they are well enough to leave hospital.
Merv Neil, 43, was critically ill in the burns unit at Auckland's Middlemore Hospital with burns over 70 per cent of his body. The other five, David Beanland, 44, Adrian Brown, 40, Brian Halford, 37, Alvan Walker, 44, Dennis Wells, 59, were stable and improving in Waikato Hospital. Cameron Grylls, 29, was slightly hurt and not hospitalised.
Rotorua Chief Fire Officer John Booth, incident controller at the site today, told NZPA the fire wasn't completely out yet.
"It's just a lot of little small smouldering fires around that are being extinguished," he said.
There were many investigators on the site, from the Fire Service through to people from various insurance companies as well as the Department of Labour.
"We'll be working on those little fires as the damaged product is removed," he said.
"What we have to do is wait back while the investigators sort of work their way into their (the fires) area of origin, and in the meantime we're removing the collapsed building material, shelving and things like that around the periphery.
"But we've got to remember we've got people working doing their investigation and we've got heavy machinery removing product and all that, so we've sort of got to stop one, do the other, then stop the investigators and put the machinery back and sort of nibble around it," Mr Booth said.
"It's a little bit protracted but it's the safest way to work it."
Mr Lovell's funeral will be held at 1pm tomorrow in the Centennial Lounge of Te Rapa Racecourse.
His coffin will be carried on a vintage fire appliance, accompanied by about 20 other appliances, in a procession through Hamilton starting at 12.15pm.
The Lovell family have requested privacy on the day of the funeral and have said they will not participate in any media interviews.
Any injured firefighters who manage to attend the funeral have also asked for privacy, specifically that no photographs be taken of them.
The Fire Service said yesterday work had already started on the process of recommending various people for bravery awards.
Firefighters, ambulance staff, off-duty medical staff from a nearby function, and members of the public rushed to the coolstore when they heard the explosion, dragged injured firefighters clear and gave them first aid.
Their efforts were later described as "incredibly brave" by Waikato Hospital's head of trauma surgery, Grant Christey.
He said the explosion would have raced through the coolstore at 2000km/h and had the same high energy levels as a terror bomb blast in Iraq or London.
The Fire Service assistant commander of the Bay-Waikato region, Roy Breeze, said emergency workers and members of the public who rushed to help after the explosion had done "an incredible job.
"There will be commendations to a number of people. We've already got lists of the people who were involved," he said.
"We're trying to assess everyone, including the public, police, ambulance - everyone's involvement in what they did - assessing the recognition that is required for the rewards to various people."
- NZPA
