At least six lives were lost in the deliberately-lit Loafers Lodge inferno – but if not for the courageous actions of the firefighters who rushed to the scene, the death toll would have been much higher. Neil Reid reports
When ear-piercing fire alarms started screeching in Loafers Lodge early Tuesday morning some residents rolled over in their beds and tried to get back to sleep.
According to some survivors of the deadly blaze - which has claimed the lives of at least six people, and up to 20 people remain unaccounted for - alarm setoffs weren’t uncommon; either down to false alarms or being activated by someone’s burnt cooking or the smell of cigarettes being lit in bedrooms.
Those previous alarms include late Monday evening after a small sofa fire; about two hours before sections of the lodge – which largely housed “vulnerable” people needing cheap accommodation – were engulfed in flames.
But early Tuesday morning the ominous sound of the alarms was for real; a blaze – described as “arson” by police – which had begun on one of the upper floors of the four-level building had trapped residents; some of whom were tragically burnt to death.
Resident Simon Hanify was awake when the alarm was reactivated around 12.15am; instead of the lack of smoke earlier in the night the air was now becoming thick with an “acrid burning smell of plasticky material”.
He was one of the first to try and alert fellow residents to the danger.
As the blaze quickly spread, including on the upper levels, some were already trapped by the flames which onlookers below have recalled were shooting out of windows and other exit points of the building by up to 5 metres.
The first fire crews – from both the Wellington City and Newtown fire stations - were on site within three minutes of the initial 111 call being made.
“The ‘get to work’ [to extinguish flames] was pretty quick,” Wellington Fire and Emergency district manager Nick Pyatt told the Herald.
“But when you have a fire that you can see is developing and you have people who obviously need to be rescued, it is conflicting priorities.
“When you have got people prepared to jump off a four-storey building that gives you a bit of an understanding of what our people were faced with, and what the people who were waiting to be rescued, what their mindset was.”
As flames tore through the fully occupied lodge, desperate residents dialled 111.
The calls continued as the fire appliances were on their way to the scene, and also as the initial firefighters bravely entered the inferno.
Pyatt said he was unable to confirm claims that some trapped residents on the upper floors were still talking to communication centre operators when their phone lines dropped out.
“There has been a lot of speculation over this incident already, but that will come out in the debriefing processes,” he said.
But what he and other senior Fire and Emergency New Zealand [FENZ] staff can confirm is some of the incredible bravery of staff who managed to rescue 52 people from the building; including at least five from the roof of the lodge.
Crews – and at the height of the blaze more than 20 attended the fire from as far away as Porirua and the Hutt Valley – braved searing heat, in some places near-zero visibility, and uncertainty over the structural integrity of the badly damaged building to both try and rescue residents, as well as attack the flames.
As firefighters made their way up the building, residents managing to self-evacuate urged them to “save their mates who are up on the top floor”.
“Our crews, and our comms centre who were taking the 111 calls from people inside, responded and carried out their actions beyond any expectations,” Pyatt said.
The first police recon team to enter the building on Wednesday later described damage, on the third floor in particular, as extensive with debris up to 1 metre high.
Survivors spoken to by the Herald have described the horror that engulfed them as the fire quickly tore through Loafers Lodge.
One man recalled how it was the panicked voice of another resident that alerted him to a real emergency, not the sound of the fire alarm going off.
“It was the neighbour [shouting] ‘fire! fire!’ and the whole hallway was filled with smoke,” the third-floor resident said.
The man crawled for his life – including down the stairway – as the building filled with smoke.
“It was hard to crawl as [there’s] only that much airspace on the ground. It was straight-up scary,” he said. “It was a struggle.”
Another resident, Warren Holdaway, spoke of how he sprinted for his life when he first smelt smoke in the building.
His exit took about 20 seconds, saying that he was fortunate to have a room so close to the stairway.
“Fire and emergency services were still arriving when I came out of the building,” he said. “There was smoke coming out of the building. The fire brigade got themselves set up and then the flames burst through the roof, the windows.”
Hanify had also managed to self-evacuate through “really thick, black horrible smoke”.
Chills went down him as he looked back at the burning building from the safety of Newtown’s Adelaide Rd.
“They [flames] were licking out of those windows, double the height and all the way up to the roof,” Hanify said.
The flames cut off escape routes down the building for some on the top floor.
One man smashed his window and jumped two storeys to a roof below where he was later rescued from.
A group of five others managed to make it up to the roof of Loafers Lodge. By the time they were rescued – with the fire raging directly below them and flames jutting up to them – one man was considering jumping four storeys to the pavement below.
Despite the fact firefighters managed to rescue 52 people, Pyatt said the number of deaths weighed on his staff’s mind.
“Our firefighters are well experienced with dealing with buildings that are on fire and entering buildings on fire,” he said.
“But when you are entering a building that is on fire and you are balancing getting people out, rescuing people, with trying to stop the fire spreading any further, it is obviously a significant challenge.
“You will never be able to do everything you want, and that is the thing that our people find hard. Our people did some incredible work that no one else, I think, would be able to do. And yet they still probably think we could have done more.
“They are working through this; it has obviously been a traumatic incident. You don’t get more traumatic than this.”
The four-level building which housed Loafers Lodge was built in 1971.
Its initial design was for it to be used as an office and a lower-level warehouse.
Before it was transformed into a lodge in 2006 offering cheap accommodation, its previous uses had been as a bank and also a church.
While the building had fire alarms, smoke doors, emergency lighting and a smoke extraction system, it did not have a sprinkler system; something which FENZ deputy national commander Brendan Nally claims would have saved lives when the fire ripped through it early Tuesday morning.
“All that tragedy, all that human tragedy, wouldn’t be here if this building was fully sprinkled with an operable system,” he said.
Legally, the operators of Loafers Lodge were not complied to install a sprinkler system due to its size – it was less than 10 storeys tall – and also because under the New Zealand Building Code, it only requires existing buildings to be brought up to the most recent standards when they undergo alterations or if the local council approves an application for a change of use of the building.
The premises had an up-to-date Building Warrant of Fitness and passed its last inspection on March 2.
There were two staircases at either end of the building, but crucially one of those was inaccessible due to flames as the blaze tore through that part of the lodge.
Lodge director Gregory Mein would not comment about the building’s condition – including its alarm system – but said the fire had resulted in the “sad loss of life”.
Loafers Lodge is described on its website as “your best choice for a quality stay” for those looking for accommodation near Wellington hospital or the capital’s CBD.
But those who knew some of its residents told a different story, describing the hostel as not the “most salubrious” of locations.
When the deadly blaze tore through the building, more than 90 people were staying there; including workers from the nearby hospital, unemployed people, some battling drug and alcohol addiction, several 501s deported from Australia and also nine people who were serving community sentences and under the supervision of Corrections.
Wellington City Missioner Murray Edridge knew of several of its residents, with his team doing their best to previously help some who are still missing.
He described many of its residents as having “some vulnerabilities”.
“And that is why they were staying in that particular place,” Edridge said. “You wouldn’t stay there unless you had very few options.
“It wasn’t the most salubrious place you could stay, obviously. But it was still a community of people, and they were still housed.”
The lodge was also described as being an accommodation of last resort by Major Christina Tyson, the Newtown branch of the Salvation Army’s pastor.
The majority of Loafers Lodge residents only managed to escape the burning building with the clothes they were wearing.
As firefighters battled the blaze – with Hanify describing water “cascading” out the windows of the building – shocked residents gathered across Adelaide Rd.
“A lot of people were in nightgowns and bare feet. A lot of people have no ID, everything they own is burned,” Hanify later told the Herald.
Help came in the way of a rapidly created evacuation centre at nearby Newtown Park.
Through the generosity of a range of charities, companies and social service providers, survivors were provided with clothing, food, shopping vouchers and also new pre-paid phones.
Warm showers at the stadium enabled residents who went there the opportunity to try and scrub the stench of the smoke from their skin.
One resident, Chris – who would not give his surname – said he feared some of his friends who authorities had not been able to contact were among those dead.
At a time of such huge sorrow, he said evacuees couldn’t thank enough those who provided generosity to them.
“I’m grateful,” he said. “A lot of different businesses came together last night [Tuesday night] for everybody that survived. “New World in Newtown, much respect to them, they sent out 90 pizzas. We could only eat like 30 of them so we had all these pizzas left over.”
Throughout the afternoon and into the early evening residents – holding bags of donated clothing and some still in bare feet - left Newtown Park destined for short-term emergency accommodation.
Edridge and his Wellington City Mission colleagues were among those caring for residents; some of whom were well-known to the charity.
“The good part of the story, and there is always a good part, is that the community have come together,” he told the Herald.
“You have got community agencies in there [the evacuation centre], you have got Government agencies, you have got council . . . and they are all working to do right by people.”
But that assistance could only help so much given the likely lasting impacts of the “huge tragedy”.
“The people are really shaken up by it... the people who have been impacted by it seriously,” he said.
“There will be trauma in that for them, and some of it won’t manifest for some time.”
Just who lit the deadly fire has not been the only major question asked in the days after the fatal blaze.
Just how the building with such a large occupancy was able to operate without a full sprinkler system has also sparked a major debate.
Chris Mak, the president of the Fire Protection Association NZ – a not-for-profit organisation that provides information, services and education to the fire protection industry and the wider community – has stated he would never stay in a hotel that didn’t have sprinklers.
MPs from across Parliament weighed into the current New Zealand Building Code which allowed Loafers Lodge to operate without a sprinkler system.
Green Party co-leader James Shaw said on Tuesday that the tragedy had left him “very, very angry”; questioning why a building such as Loafers Lodge was able to operate without sprinklers.
“The questions in my mind are what kind of country are we that we allow this kind of thing to happen,” Shaw said.
“What kind of country are we where those people have so few options in life, but to live in substandard accommodation, with a reasonable chance of lethality?”
National Party leader Christopher Luxon and his deputy Nicola Willis both visited the scene on Tuesday and spoke of how impressed they were by the professionalism and courage displayed by fire crews during the blaze.
Luxon said many questions had to be answered around the tragedy
“It’s pretty shocking what we’ve seen here overnight, and our thoughts and prayers are definitely with the people who’ve lost their lives, the families who’ve lost loved ones, and those that are now fighting for their lives in hospital as well as being grateful for our responders.”
Willis added it was “not the sort of incident you expect to see in New Zealand in 2023″.
Prime Minister Chris Hipkins also visited the site on Tuesday, speaking to various first responders to the fire.
He described the scene as “quite confronting” and said what had happened reinforced the need for safety measures at lodges and other accommodation providers.
Twenty-four hours later he said a comprehensive review of building regulations for higher density accommodation like hostels would be a likely outcome of the tragedy.
Housing Minister Megan Woods had been asked to look at “issues around building regulation” to see whether there was anything the Government should change.
The Government would also take heed of any recommendations that come out of ongoing police and fire investigations.
“What comes out of their work, of course, will inform decisions about what a future review might look like.”
On Wednesday afternoon police confirmed the blaze was being treated as arson.
Acting Wellington District Commander Dion Bennett also revealed the investigation team was working through a list of persons of interest. But he would not be drawn on whether that list included any past or present Loafers Lodge residents.
A “large team” had been assigned to the arson probe “with the aim of providing a swift and timely outcome and the answers that we all need”, Bennett said.
As Bennett confirmed the cause of the fire was now being treated as arson, a small police recon team was making its way through the remains of Loafers Lodge.
The scene had been handed over from FENZ to police earlier in the day after the fire service’s urban search and rescue team had worked to minimise risks, including the lodge’s structural integrity.
Bennett spoke of a “grim” job ahead for those tasked with working in the building trying to both locate the remains of victims and also find any clues that might help what is now a homicide investigation.
“The scene examination will be extensive and methodical and we expect it to take some time, likely several days, given the large size of the building,” he said.
As police started to reduce the cordoned-off area around Adelaide Rd, more people came to pay their respects at the site on Wednesday and then Thursday morning.
Several bunches of flowers had been laid nearby in respect to those who lost their lives.
Among those who left a floral tribute was a former resident who said he knew some of those who had died in the blaze.
The man – who only wanted to be known as Chris – said he felt for the police who had a “sad” job ahead of them in what remains of Loafers Lodge.
Like so many other people, he wanted answers on how the inferno started and who was responsible.
“I presume the bros that have lost their lives are still in the building, still yet to be recovered. And that’s got to be hard for the families too,” he said. “Not knowing where their loved ones are – whether their loved ones are alive or not. “This morning, waking up and coming back... very emotional to see the building and know your bros are still in there.”
* Police urge anyone who has been staying at Loafers Lodge in recent days to get in touch.
They are asked to call 105 and reference Operation Rose, or go online to https://www.police.govt.nz/use-105#online-report-options and select the form “Something Else”, referencing Operation Rose.
The 19-year-old disappeared without her wallet or mobile phone.