KEY POINTS:
SATURDAY April 5 dawned full of promise for Adrian Brown. It was the new beginning the veteran firefighter had waited years for. Here he was, on his first shift in a new station that was at last in his own patch.
For the past two of his 15 years in the service he had commuted from his Morrinsville home to the Papakura Fire Station, a distance of 100km. Before that Avondale was his station.
The travel was do-able due to firefighters' rosters of two day shifts, two night shifts followed by four days off. But it was far from ideal.
Brown, 41, could have found work nearer home outside the Fire Service but he's a committed firefighter. He had been studying for his station officer's exams. "He was going places," say his Papakura colleagues.
So Brown kept applying for Fire Service jobs that would ease the travel burden and afford him more time at home with his wife and two young children.
Finally, he struck it lucky, landing a job in Hamilton. He was assigned to Red Watch, one of four shifts that staff the city's main station in Anglesea St.
One of his Red Watch colleagues was Alvan Walker, a 35-year-old with 12 years service under his belt. Walker had been down the same road, been stationed at Papakura, and landed the Hamilton job after years of unsuccessful applications.
Their boss, Red Watch commander Derek Lovell, was also a veteran of the Papakura station. He was a neighbour at Patumahoe, on Auckland's southern fringe, of Phil Beech, a watch commander at Papakura.
Lovell had "a beautiful lifestyle property", recalls Beech. Relocating to Waikato was among the changed circumstances that evolved from the breakup of his first marriage.
But that had worked out for the keen hunter and trout fisherman. He'd married again to Milli eight years ago and had a daughter, 18-month-old Tiffany. Lovell had recently built a duck pond on their rural Cambridge property.
"They were just great," says Beech. "She was the person he should have met long ago."
Lovell, a man's man with a fondness for high jinks, was a popular boss. He had the happy knack of taking his job seriously, but not himself.
If Brown had cause to raise a celebratory glass on completing that first shift last Saturday night, so did Lovell.
Lovell was a member of the class of 83 - those who joined the Fire Service exactly 25 years ago that day - and was to drive north for a reunion dinner with 13 of his fellow inductees at the Auckland City fire station.
Looking at one of the photographs from 1983, one recruit commented that it was amazing they'd made it through 25 years as firefighters without casualty. They had no idea that a rare tragedy was enveloping Red Watch.
4.03PM
An emergency alarm is triggered at a cool storage plant on the southeastern outskirts of Hamilton.
Icepak Coolstores Ltd has several buildings adjacent to SH1 in Tamahere. Its storage units hold more than 2000 tonnes of cheese, plus fruit and vegetables.
The company has thrived since bought in 1990 by Jan Van Eden and 16 years later was ranked 26th on Deloitte's list of fastest-growing companies.
The Tamahere plant has a fire detection system but not sprinklers as water would freeze in the low temperatures.
A security firm that monitors the company's system reports that an alarm has gone off to the Hamilton Fire Station where Red Watch was nearing the end of its 8am-6pm shift.
The eight firefighters Lovell, Brown, Walker, Merv Neil, 43, Dennis Wells, 51, Brian Halford, 37, David Beanland, 44, and Cameron Grylls, 29 leave in two fire engines with no reason to suspect they are attending anything other than the sort of call they get almost daily.
The first message logged from the crews records the job as routine. They find no indication of fire.
Another message soon after notes a gas-like vapour coming from the doors of one of the buildings. The Fire Service declined to confirm the Herald's understanding of the message log, citing privacy, but Roy Breeze, Waikato's assistant chief fire officer said a gas-like vapour was noticed coming from the doors. There was no smell.
Reports would later emerge of someone telling the firefighters to enter the building despite signs of vapour. "What we heard," says Breeze, "is that ... someone called out [something like] ... 'Don't worry about it guys, that's normal'."
Having found the doors locked, a telephone call was understood to have been made to the company's designated keyholder. Entry was then forced.
At least two firefighters went inside to investigate. Lovell, as the most senior officer, stayed outside in a co-ordinating role. Near him was Grylls who drove one of the engines.
Most of the men wore level two uniforms those that provide most protection.
Merv Neil, who drove the other engine, may not have had time to change from the less protective overalls of the level one uniform worn when not fighting fires. Normally the driver sets up the pumps and hoses on arrival and then changes into his number twos.
Neil, married with two grown-up children, had planned to leave work early to go to stockcar racing at Huntly but the Icepak alarm intervened. Still, there was nothing to suggest it would be a long job or they were in danger.
It is unclear what knowledge the crews had of the premises or whether they had a risk assessment plan of the plant with them.
Fire Stations often have such plans for buildings assessed as more than usual risk and take them in the fire engine. Hospitals are in that category, for example, because of evacuation issues concerning immobile patients; a plant such as Icepak's could be because of refrigeration chemicals and lack of a ready water source.
The plans have five categories, from risk to people to whether a building has a high fire loading, rated on the presence of hazardous substances such as gas and chemicals and the availability of water. Each category is rated 1 (low risk) to 5 (high) giving the premises a potential maximum risk rating of 25. Breeze wasn't able to confirm whether the crews had a plan for Icepak but said the coolstore's risk rating wouldn't be less than 20.
The men wore their helmets but most didn't have the flash-hood pulled down which secures the helmet to the rest of the suit. Most were not wearing protective gloves.
Within a minute of the firefighters forcing entry, the building blew up.
4.35PM
A priority radio message sent by Grylls from the scene was the first indication the Fire Service got of a disaster. There had been an explosion, it said. There were major injuries.
"I think I stayed on my feet," Grylls later said, "but there was debris flying everywhere. I think there was a big fireball".
He began a head count and found Lovell, who had been blown back a distance, unresponsive. Grylls, a trained nurse, began CPR on his boss. Members of the public rushed to the scene. One took over CPR on Lovell while Grylls radioed for help.
Nearby, Linda Glover was among 300 attending the Tamahere School's Pumpkin Festival. Glover likened the explosion to a bomb.
Freelance writer Philippa Stevenson was biking home from a family gathering when she felt the force of the blast propel her faster down the road. She turned to see a big fireball jetting into the sky.
Two hundred metres from the Icepak site, Stevenson's partner Leo Koppen also felt the airwave from the explosion. "It was the biggest bang I've ever heard," said Koppen who got in his car and drove to the plant.
Matt Reynolds was a similar distance away at Gails of Tamahere where his sister had just got married. He watched Leanne and husband Grant Bradley pose for photographs in their Mustang wedding car. In line of sight behind the Mustang was the Icepak building. "I heard the explosion and looked up. I can clearly remember seeing what must have been the roof going sky-high in the air."
Reynolds sprinted towards the explosion to be confronted by the otherworldly sight of a decimated building and sitting among the rubble a fire engine, burning.
Other vivid impressions: a quiet eerie feeling broken by the static of a two-way radio in one of the fire engines, a noise like someone moaning and, later, the horrified looks on the faces of arriving backup crews upon seeing their wounded colleagues their faces and hands bloodied and blackened, skin and hair seared wherever it was exposed.
One, a big man with a big moustache, wandered zombie-like, shocked, a flap of skin hanging from a fried calve muscle.
That fireman was talking but making little sense save to answer Reynolds query of where he hurt with the repeated phrase "sore eyes". "He had real clear eyes," says Reynolds, "no pupils."
Reynolds, his father-in-law Neil Quinlan, and one other carried to safety the last firefighter to be accounted for. There was smoke and naked flames but not a big fire. That came later. The fireman was a deadweight. There was a lot of blood but when they lay him down he rolled over by himself. He wore the number twos, the protective yellow firefighting suit, and an oxygen tank.
He must have been one of the firemen who went inside the building, but inside and out were rendered one and the same by the explosion. Reynolds didn't need to go through a door to find him; it was all wreckage.
A nurse who happened by and whose name hasn't been revealed, tended to Beanland, applying pressure to his head to stem the bleeding and was relieved to discover her initial fear that he had lost an eye was wrong it was covered in congealed blood.
Beanland may have saved himself greater injury by covering his face with his hands and briefly holding his breath during the blast, a self-preservation technique he'd been reminded of watching an extreme explosion documentary a few weeks earlier.
At Waikato Hospital the injuries were likened to those of victims of a terror bomb in London or Iraq. The men exhibited lung, ear and eye injuries consistent with being hit by a powerful blast.
Director of trauma, Grant Christey, calculated it travelled at roughly 2000km/h. "That was the blast pulse that hit these firefighters, followed by a superheated gas wave that would have blown all the exposed skin and clothes off."
11PM
After numerous cardiac arrests, Derek Lovell was pronounced dead in Waikato Hospital. Wife Milli later said she was proud he died doing something he was passionate about.
"That would have been the way he would have wanted to have died and he would have hated to have lived and seen his men suffering and dying."
SUNDAY APRIL 6
The cause of the inferno comes into focus. Two possibilities stand out: a gas explosion or a backdraught.
Gases used in the refrigeration process may have leaked, filling the building, but an explosion would require an ignition. In this scenario a spark may have been created by the investigating firefighters.
Some two-way radios produce a spark but those used by the Fire Service are supposed to be intrinsically safe, as are the firefighter's helmet-mounted lamps. But handheld torches can produce a spark.
A backdraught can occur when a fire is starved of oxygen; consequently combustion ceases but the fuel gases and smoke remain at high temperature. If oxygen is introduced, say by opening a door to a confined space, combustion can restart often resulting in an explosion as the gases heat and expand.
Backdraughts are very dangerous and often surprise even experienced firefighters. The phenomenon featured in an Oscar-nominated movie of the same name.
Characteristic signs of imminent backdraught include yellow or brown smoke that exits small holes or cracks in puffs that is sometimes "sucked" back into the enclosed space by pressure differentials, hence the term backdraught.
If a backdraught did occur at Icepak, a small fire may have been smouldering for hours, consuming the oxygen in the building.
However, if heat was the case smoke alarms should have detected the fire earlier.
Several investigations are under way. They will probably consider any implications of reported disruption to the power supply on Saturday morning.
TUESDAY APRIL 8
Herald reporter James Ihaka pulls off SH1 to inspect the Icepak site. Three days on it still stuns. A mess of metal and muck, some still smouldering. A fire engine stands by. A white tape cordon surrounds a section of the remains.
Fire assessors and investigators are on hand, trucks come and go, removing what cheese they can, salvageable metal is being stacked, the smaller debris dumped into a pit.
Under the direction of Environment Waikato, channels have been dug to contain toxic run-off. Drought has helped stop seepage to the watertable.
What is unforgettable is the stench of charred cheese. Like the smell of the meatworks, the cloying odour assaults his nostrils and lodges there.
FRIDAY APRIL 11
Six days after the explosion, as the ruins still smoulder, Lovell's coffin is borne through the streets of Hamilton by a vintage fire engine trailed by 20 fire appliances and five ambulances, each carrying one of the injured: Beanland, Brown, Halford, Walker and Wells those whose conditions were stable enough for them to leave Waikato Hospital.
There too was Grylls, who initially gave Lovell the kiss of life and who must wonder at fate that left him slightly injured yet took Lovell, the nearest to him.
Neil remains critically ill in Auckland's Middlemore Hospital with burns over 71 per cent of his body.
Herald reporters James Ihaka, Andrew Koubaridis, Juliet Rowan and Beck Vass contributed to this report.
