KEY POINTS:
Martinborough schoolboy Lionel Maukau is to be recommended for a bravery award after he dragged his grandparents to safety from their burning house.
Jackie and Peter Rogers were asleep in their beds when fire broke out in their Kitchener St home about 5pm on Friday.
Thirteeen-year-old Lionel told the Wairarapa Times-Age he had just finished gardening when he heard what he thought was rain on the roof of the house his family had moved into last month.
He went back outside and saw smoke and flames erupting from the roof above his grandparents' room.
"I ran back inside screaming to them to wake up because there was a fire.
"I helped my grandmother get to the other side of the house away from the fire and then went back and got grandad."
Nearby resident Bruce Sullivan arrived and the pair got the elderly couple down the steps.
"If it wasn't for Lionel being home on school holidays we would have been burned alive, I just know it," said Mr Rogers, who is barely able to walk unaided because of arthritis.
He was treated at hospital for smoke inhalation and discharged.
Martinborough fire chief Garry Jackson said he was going to recommend that Lionel was officially recognised for his bravery and quick actions during the fire.
Wairarapa fire safety officer Henry Stechman said the cause of the fire had yet to be determined, although it appeared to have started beside the front porch of the house.
- NZPA
