Toddlers playing with fire 'disturbing' - fire service

File photo / Hawkes Bay Today

Fire safety officers are disturbed by what appears to be a growing trend in toddlers starting fires by playing with matches and lighters, the latest incident nearly claiming the lives of a woman and her two-year-old twins.

Fire risk management officer Phil Faidley said today he had personally attended five such incidents since December 23 - all involving four-year-olds in Auckland.

The Fire Services could not be reached to get national figures.

Yesterday afternoon, a woman and her two-year-old twins had been sleeping in a bedroom of a Druces Rd, Wiri, house when she was woken by a smoke alarm and saw smoke pouring into the room.

Papatoetoe senior station officer Terry Jenner said shee grabbed the twins and rushed towards the front door through a hallway, which was filled with smoke down to a metre above the floor.

As she ran towards the front door she saw a ball of fire in the living area.

"Quite honestly it was just a ball of fire - it was totally engulfed," Mr Jenner said.

She managed to get outside and was screaming for her four-year-old son, who she feared could still be inside, but quickly found him hiding in a garden shed.

Mr Jenner said the woman and her children would have died had it not been for a working smoke alarm.

"It definitely, undoubtedly saved the lives of those three people in there, I have no doubt about that whatsoever. It was only minutes away before that smoke would have killed all three of them."

The woman and the twins were taken to hospital and treated for smoke inhalation.

Mr Faidley said it appeared the four-year-old boy had started the blaze by playing with a lighter but investigators had not ruled out other possible causes.

The Fire Service was researching what appeared to be a growing number of toddlers starting house fires, he said.

There was no commonality to the five such incidents he had attended recently, other than the children's ages.

"What I'm seeing - and I don't know if this is a continuation of a common theme or if it's a new development - is pre-school children who are not getting immersive education about fire safety and are becoming more aware of fire behaviour, so that's a disturbing thing to me."

There were fire awareness programmes aimed at preschoolers, but these were not launched with as much fervour and intensity as the Fire Wise programme, which was aimed at five to eight-year-olds, Mr Faidley said.

The firefighters who attended the Wiri house fire had a just extinguished a massive blaze in a house on Redcrest Ave, Papakura, and were black with ash and soot when they arrived at the second blaze.

Numerous callers had told officers that there were three people inside the house, which was completely engulfed in flames.

Mr Jenner said firefighters entered the burning house in the hope someone had somehow survived the inferno, but found no one.

One firefighter fell through the floorboards, which had been weakened by flames, and the roof was minutes away from collapsing.

Fortunately, the callers had been wrong and the family who lived there had been out.

- NZPA