NZ woman dies in Melbourne fire

Two people, one a New Zealand woman, have died in a fire that engulfed their room at a boarding house in the Melbourne suburb of Brunswick early yesterday.

A 27-year-old woman from Christchurch and a man died, while another five were evacuated when fire swept through the building, above a pizza shop in Sydney Rd at 7.25am (NZ time).

Boarding house tenant Nathan Rao said he was the first person to be woken by the blaze.

Mr Rao said he tried to open the door to the room where the two people slept, but could not. "It was locked. The amount of smoke coming out of there, I knew no one in there was going to be too healthy."