Fire in Wellington's tallest building

Photo / Matthew Backhouse

Firefighters had to douse their own truck after it caught fire during the evacuation of Wellington's tallest building this afternoon.

About 1400 people had to leave the 28-storey Majestic Centre following a small electrical fire on the 22nd floor.

Eight fire trucks and a command unit rushed to the inner-city office tower on the corner of Willis and Boulcott streets after a worker smelled smoke and set off the alarm at 2.11pm.

Wellington senior station officer Steve Mackle said firefighters had to cut open the walls and ceiling to put out the small fire in a bank of electrical switches.

Firefighters also had to douse one of their own trucks after the front-left brake caught fire as it arrived.

"Obviously they're a heavy truck and we're trying to move quite quickly, there's a lot of energy going through the brakes, and one of them overheated so much that it caught fire.''

Asked if that was ironic, Mr Mackle said: "Yes, it was a wee bit.''

Mr Mackle said the damage to the building was relatively minor and people would be able to re-enter it this afternoon.

"We've extinguished the fire but there's a strong smell of electrical burning on a few of the other floors, so we're pretty much having to clear those as we go,'' he said.

"We've made a bit of a mess cutting up the wall. We opened it right up so we can see what's burning. In the scheme of things, very minor damage.''

The smoke was pungent and would have been toxic in large quantities, but because the fire was small it was just "uncomfortable''.

Mr Mackle said the building had a good evacuation scheme, and it had worked smoothly.

"It's quite hard evacuating that many floors down the stairwells, because they seem narrow at the time. But generally it flows pretty quickly.''

Mr Mackle said it was an effort getting resources up to the fire.

"As soon as you get above a few floors, suddenly it's very manpower intensive to actually try to achieve anything.''