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A South Auckland man has described how he made several attempts to find the occupants of a blazing house yesterday before stumbling across a woman lying in a pool of blood.
"Her eyes were open but she couldn't speak at all. I tried talking to her to see if there was anyone else in the house, asking her to squeeze my hand if there was anyone else, but she couldn't do anything," Shay Kingham told the Herald last night.
"I called out to another guy and we dragged her out of the house and on to the front lawn. That's when the firefighters started arriving."
Minutes later, as firefighters searched the burning two-storey house, they found a man dead in an upstairs room.
He is believed to have been the partner of the woman, who had a serious injury to the back of her head.
Late last night, she was in a critical but stable condition in Auckland City Hospital.
The woman is in her 40s. The man is understood to sell swimming pools through Trade Me.
Police and firefighters are investigating the fire, which is being treated as suspicious.
Witnesses reported hearing loud explosions just before fire broke out at the home in Roscommon Rd, Clendon, which has a hair salon in the basement.
Della Feng, whose home backs on to the property, was working on her computer when she noticed a "funny smell".
"I rushed out the door, the flames appeared like waves. Oh my God, I was just frightened."
She ran to a neighbour's house and they tried to use a hose to bring the flames under control.
"We put the hose through the fence ... I couldn't see really clearly. We just did what we could and then the firefighters arrived.
"It was really hot. I just panicked and my neighbour comforted me."
Ten-year-old Samantha, who lives in the area, said she was bicycling past the house about 2.30pm and saw a lady in a front room, possibly the kitchen.
"The next minute she fell over. She may have been cooking or something."
Samantha said she thought she saw someone else standing behind the woman and ran to get her nana.
"When we came back there was a big fire. We saw a lady getting into an ambulance with bandages around her head."
Mr Kingham was driving home with his family when they noticed smoke coming from just under the roofline of the house.
The 28-year-old engineer pulled over and ran to the house, but found all the doors locked.
He noticed three cars in the driveway and was worried people from them might be inside, so he smashed a window.
"I jumped in through the window to have a look to see if there was anyone inside," he said.
"I went to the hallway door and opened [it] up and black smoke just poured out everywhere, so I pretty much got straight out the house."
Mr Kingham then found an open garage door and made his way through a downstairs part of the house, where he found the badly injured woman.
"I found a lady down on the floor. She was down on the ground with a big laceration to [the back of] her head and in a big pool of blood.
"I thought if there was a stairwell there she may have tried to get out of the house and tripped and fallen and hit her head, but the severity of the injury looked worse than that."
With the fire growing rapidly, Mr Kingham called out to another person for help and they dragged the injured woman outside.
By the time firefighters got inside the part of the house where the two rescuers had found the woman, it was engulfed in flames.
Mr Kingham said he was shocked to hear that a person had died upstairs.
"I was really hoping that I wasn't going to hear that anyone else was inside ...
"When you hear of someone dying at the scene you always wish you could have got there a little bit earlier, but I'm glad to get someone else out; that's the main thing."
Neighbours said two people lived in the house, an Asian woman and a European man. They often fought.
"She was really nice but [the man] I always found to be a bit grumpy," said neighbour Sesilia Faaetete, who would often chat to the woman over the fence.
"They were always arguing, shouting, any time of the day.
"Her partner came over one night and said if we heard them fighting to go over there and ask them to stop.
"He said [the woman] was getting too feisty."
Fire Safety Officer Ray Coleman said samples were expected to be taken from around the house which would then be tested for the presence of accelerants.
The house would be inspected today to see where the fire started and what caused it.
