Police name girl killed in house fire

Firefighters say the Otara house did not have smoke alarms. Picture / Greg Bowker

Police today released the name of an eight-year-old girl killed in a house fire in South Auckland yesterday.

She was Chelsea-May Lising, who died in the fire in Otara.

Three others in the rented property in East Tamaki Drive were taken to Middlemore Hospital.

A 10-year-old boy, who suffered burns to three-quarters of his body, remained in a critical condition in intensive care today.

A 16-year-old boy and an 18-year-old woman were both serious but stable.

A man who was in the house and is understood to be the family's stepfather was uninjured.

Chelsea-May's mother was believed to be travelling in the Philippines when the tragedy stuck.

Investigators were still looking into the cause of the fire, but said it was likely to have begun in the kitchen.

The Fire Service's chief fire safety officer in Auckland, Murray Binning, said it was probably started by oil on the stove overheating.

There were no fire alarms in the house.

Neighbour Brian Keogh, who raced to the house when he saw smoke, told of how he took hold of Chelsea-May and was about to pull her out a window when he was blown back by a fireball and had to let go.

A devastated Mr Keogh said he had been heading out for a day's fishing when he heard cries of children inside the three-bedroom stucco-brick building.

"The older daughter was screaming, 'My baby sister and baby brother are still inside'," he said.

He and another man smashed the deadlocked windows of the children's bedroom.

"I jumped up, reached down and grabbed the little girl by her blue night-dress," he said.

"But as I looked to the left I could see into the lounge. There was black smoke. The other people helping smashed windows in the house and opened up the door. As soon as they did that a fireball came into the kids' bedroom and just engulfed them.

"It just went woosh and blew me back out the window and I dropped her.

"Once the flames had engulfed the bedroom I knew there was not much else I could do for her."

He and other would-be rescuers had to wait for firefighters before the children could be taken from the house.

- NZPA and NZ HERALD