Inspector Dion Bennett, Acting Wellington District Commander, says police are expecting to recover the first bodies from the Loafers Lodge fire today. Video / George Heard
The sister of a man who used to live at Loafers Lodge said he was charged $250 a week to stay in “shamefully sub-standard” conditions.
The lodge director wouldn’t comment on claims of poor conditions and high prices, but noted there were bound to be “disgruntled” people in a place that can house “90-odd people”.
The woman’s brother, Andrew, was a previous resident of the Wellington hostel that caught fire in the early hours of Tuesday morning, claiming at least six lives.
Police entered the building yesterday to begin their on-scene investigation into the deadly blaze, which has displaced many people and left others still unaccounted for.
New Zealanders needed to do more to keep vulnerable people out of poor accommodation, said Andrew’s sister, who did not want to be named.
“We as a society have failed our most vulnerable people,” she said.
Her brother lived at “that horrendous lodge” for several months about three years ago, and the woman said she still remembered the poor conditions of the accommodation from the times she visited him there.
She and her loved ones bought a flat for Andrew to live in until his unrelated death last year.
“We got him out of that place as soon as we could,” she said.
Loafers Lodge after the deadly fire that swept through the building on Adelaide Rd, Wellington. Photo / George Heard
She said Andrew was being charged $250 a week for a dirty room with a window that didn’t shut and allowed rain and traffic fumes in. Each floor shared a bathroom and there were also communal kitchens and living areas.
“You had to wait and queue up for a turn at the stove.”
Other boarding houses in Wellington with communal kitchens and bathrooms currently have rooms listed at prices ranging from $190 to $265 per week, expenses included.
She remembered Andrew’s concern for a quiet and gentle woman in the room next to his, who barely ventured out due to her fear of “the level of alcoholic male violence in the place”.
When Andrew moved in, there was white poison powder on the carpets to kill bed bugs, with a sign warning people not to vacuum up the powder. It was still there weeks later when the woman visited Andrew again.
When Andrew finally managed to move into the flat his family organised for him, his possessions were infested with bed bugs, which continued to cause him discomfort up until his death.
The 92-room, short-term accommodation block at Loafers Lodge had fire alarms, a smoke extraction system and two exit stairwells, but did not have sprinklers.
The building passed its most recent Warrant of Fitness and was not required to have sprinklers.
The one advantage of the hostel was that some residents seemed to take comfort in being amongst others who were all going through similar tough times, and in knowing they weren’t on the street, Andrew’s sister said.
Flames were seen shooting from the Loafers Lodge in Wellington after a fatal fire on Tuesday. Photo / Sunnie Chan
Watching the news of the fire on the TV last night brought the woman to tears.
“I was sketching the few faces I remembered, how likely some of those are amongst the dead. If Andrew had been still living there, he probably would have been amongst the dead too . . . he was on the upper floor.”
He said the management team looked after the day-to-day running of the lodge, so he was unable to comment on specific allegations.
“If you’ve got 90-odd people, there’s bound to be a couple of disgruntled ones in there and, as I said, we deal with a myriad of different people from different walks of life, who have different needs, and you know, one person might feel aggrieved, I don’t know.
“But they [did] have the right, of course, if they didn’t like it, to leave.
“We don’t keep anyone there who doesn’t want to be kept there. We try to assist them as much as we can.”
