A South Auckland house has been ravaged by an early morning fire today.Fire fighters were called to the single-storey house in Boundary Rd, Opaheke, Papakura shortly after 1am.

Motorists braved flames to free a driver and three passengers from a burning vehicle involved in a fatal crash near Palmerston North.

Firefighters from rural New Zealand are flying to Canada to help battle blazes raging in almost 800,000 hectares of forest.

A car with four occupants has rolled on the western side of Lake Taupo.

Firefighters have been working to contain a poisonous gas leak at a meatworks near Ngaruawahia this morning - the second at the company in less than a fortnight.

Four crews from the Fire Service attended the incident on Favona Ave at 11.45pm, spokesman Steve Smith said.

Fire crews are battling a fire at a vacant house in Napier tonight.

A house fire in Glen Innes this morning is being treated as suspicious.

A fire in Feilding has left a residential property with major damage this morning.

Firefighters remain at the scene of a fire that has left a house "severely damaged" near Christchurch this morning.

A crane is being brought in to move a truck after it rolled on its side earlier this morning near Wellington.

The Fire Service wants new regulations on child-safe lighters to be fast-tracked by the Government after another house was badly damaged by a child playing with a lighter.

The blaze that gutted two Queenstown homes was yet another caused by the poor disposal of hot ashes, a fire safety officer says.

A fire broke out in one of the stands at the New Zealand Boat Show this morning, damaging fishing equipment and closing a section of the display.

Six fire trucks were called to the scene of the fire on Hickory Avenue in Henderson at 2.12pm, northern fire communications shift manager Scott Osmond said.

No chickens were harmed in a fire that tore through a commercial chicken processing plant in rural Waikato this morning.

An Auckland RSA is facing an uncertain future after it was engulfed in flames in the early hours of the morning.

A large blaze ripped through an Auckland factory this morning, causing extensive damage to the building’s interior.

Firefighters are at the scene of a house fire after a blaze broke out this morning.

A house in West Auckland has been destroyed by fire this afternoon.

A fault in an electronic communications system used by emergency services is putting the lives of frontline workers at immediate risk, a union warns.

The Fire Service has been ordered to pay $3500 in costs to a senior staff member who received an unjustified formal warning for bullying.

Police could only stand back and watch as fire destroyed a 10m yacht south of Auckland yesterday.

While a prediction of sunny weather for the rest of the month will be good news to sunseekers, it's unlikely to be welcomed by those suffering from dry conditions.

Wind has blown down power lines in central Auckland, cutting power to 1300 homes in Newmarket.

The firefighting pilot who escaped a helicopter crash unscathed says he's happy nobody was hurt and doesn't think mechanical failure or pilot error caused the crash.

Firefighters warn it could take days, even weeks, to totally extinguish a massive Marlborough fire that broke out yesterday.

As large-scale scrub fires continue to burn across tinder-dry farmland, the Fire Service says the country has seen a 50 per cent jump in the number of rural fires this year.

A fire that started in Marlborough overnight continued to rage today. Homes have been threatened from the fire blazing through 150ha of scrub near Onamalutu.