Police would like to speak to two young men who stopped to assist as they were driving past the house and saw flames.

St John has begun rolling out a new generation of ambulances equipped with stretchers that can carry heavier patients.

CONTENT WARNING: It's not just families and friends of victims who are affected, Suicide can take a toll on the people on the front line as well.

A video posted by the Russian Emergency Ministry captures firefighters saving about 150 pigs and piglets from a barn fire in a Siberian village.

Friends of the youngest of four people killed when a man drove into a crowd in Melbourne have spoken out, saying "we all feel helpless and hopeless at times like this".

Emergency services are making their way to an crash in the Dome Forest near Warkworth this afternoon.

The cause of the fire is not yet known.

Three people are injured after a pile-up north of Wellington.

District health boards are making their final preparations for the three-day strike by unionised resident doctors that starts tomorrow morning.

Emergency services were called to the incident on the Otematata-Kurow Rd section of the highway near Lake Aviemore shortly before 4pm.

A fire has broken out in a downtown Auckland tower this afternoon.

Waikato District Health Board is postponing around 500 patients' appointments because of the strike.

A woman is in a critical condition following a near drowning on Auckland's North Shore.

The medical condition was described as being something that "just happens sometimes".

Around 70 firefighters battled a blaze in West Auckland that involved potentially hazardous chemicals.

A man has been helped from his car after a two vehicle crash in Manurewa, Auckland.

Emergency services have freed one person after a car flipped onto its roof in Ashhurst, near Palmerston North. A police spokeswoman

Three people have died on New Zealand roads so far this weekend, adding to the summer holiday road carnage.

Hundreds of litres of diesel spilled from a truck's fuel tank in a Dome Valley crash this morning.

Police have arrested two people who tried to flee after they crashed their car into a house early this morning.

St John Ambulance officers who ditch their uniforms as part of ongoing strike action will have their pay docked by 10 per cent.

A pedestrian has died after he was struck by a vehicle in Central Otago this evening.

A woman had to be winched from a remote South Island valley after slipping and falling heavily on a steep ridge track.

A man is in critical condition after a two-truck crash in Palmerston North, which has closed the road as freight spilled across both lanes.

A car has slammed into a lamp post and then a tree in Mangere in South Auckland.

One person may be trapped after a car crash near Whangarei this evening. Emergency services have just arrived on the scene of the

Firefighters have cut a woman out of a car after the vehicle crashed in Whanganui.

MEAT THE MAYOR: Tauranga Mayor Greg Brownless served up sausages at the waterfront on New Year's Eve. Photo/George Novak 311216gn04bop By

New Year's Eve has got off to a disastrous start to two people who were injured in a dune buggy crash in Northland this evening.

Traffic on most main highways should be easing within the next hour or so after heavy congestion yesterday and earlier today.