KEY POINTS:
A 3-year-old has died from the effects of a house fire that just weeks ago killed his older brother and destroyed their new home.
Alexander Colcord was originally saved from the Whangarei house fire that claimed his 5-year-old brother Jacob, but the younger boy last week lost his fight for life.
But while being treated in the burns unit at Middlemore Hospital he finally succumbed to the effects of smoke inhalation and burns to 20 per cent of his body.
The brothers had been playing with matches in their bedroom on the morning of June 20 while their mother slept in another room.
Neighbours raised the alarm when they noticed smoke billowing from the weatherboard villa, before the boys' stepfather, Carlos, and a flatmate pulled them outside to the porch.
Although the house had four smoke alarms, none had batteries.
"Jacob was already dead but Alex was still breathing," Alex's grandmother Elf Noon said. "He kept breathing for 16 days. The doctor was in tears when she told me the news."
The Tauranga woman spoke out to urge the public to prevent "such a tragedy" from happening again.
"I just want to cry out to all of New Zealand to hide the matches, hide the lighters. Don't let children play with them. And check the batteries in the smoke alarm."
Noon said the boys' mother, Emily Colcord, was a shattered woman who had "lost everything". She had moved into the house with her children and Carlos three weeks before the fire and assumed the smoke alarms had batteries in them.
"She finally got a house and set herself up. And then this happened," said Noon.
"Jacob and Alex were beautiful children," she said. "Loveable boys, but very curious."
