A Pāpāmoa father awoke this morning to a fire in his garage, leaving his two cars “completely burned out”.
Anthony Thompson said he was already awake when he “heard a bit of a bang” outside.
He went to his double garage to investigate and opened the door.
“I went, ‘hang on, I didn’t leave any lights on in there’.
“And then I could see some smoke and a bit of flame coming out the side.”
Thompson called the fire brigade, and then woke his wife and children to get them out of the house. As the house was separate from the garage, there was no damage to it.
“I was probably shaking a little bit earlier,” Thompson said outside the charred remains this morning.
A Fire and Emergency NZ spokeswoman said crews were called to a “fully involved” fire just before 6am at a garage on Topaz Drive in Pāpāmoa.
Two fire trucks were sent from Pāpāmoa and Mount Maunganui and a fire investigator was also on the scene.
A police spokesman said officers helped with traffic control on Topaz Drive, which was closed.
Speaking to the Bay of Plenty Times outside his home, Thompson recalled smelling burning brakes last night but he could not figure out what it was.
“It smells like I’ve been hard on the brakes.
“I thought, ‘what is it? Is it one of my chargers’?”
He unplugged his chargers in his garage.
Thompson said he had two cars in his garage - one electric and one petrol.
“Everyone will probably blame the electric Leaf, but it wasn’t the Leaf, it was the brakes on the right-hand side of the Mazda. That’s where the fire started. It’s completely burned out the rim.
“That would’ve been the burning smell of the brakes that I was smelling last night. They were obviously hot or something was happening.”
Thompson said he contacted his insurance company and would start the process of the claims for his two cars, the garage and his contents.
He said the fire service did a “really good job”.
A Fire and Emergency spokesperson said the cause of the fire was a fault with the petrol car in the garage and there were no suspicious circumstances.
Some of the churches have suffered significant damage, fire teams say.