KEY POINTS:
- Send us your tributes to Derek Lovell and Waikato firefighters
Firefighter Derek Lovell should have been at a reunion on the night he died, celebrating 25 years on the job.
Instead, he and seven crew members were called to the Icepak coolstore in Tamahere, on the outskirts of Hamilton, where they were hit by a mammoth explosion. Mr Lovell, a husband and father of a little girl, took the full brunt of the blast, suffering critical injuries.
