Whanganui house destroyed in early morning fire

A Kaikokopu Rd home has been destroyed in an early morning blaze. Photo/ Stuart Munro

A Whanganui house has been completely destroyed in an early morning fire which damaged neighbouring properties.

Police and fire investigators are on the scene working to determine the cause of the blaze which started in a vacant Kaikokopu Rd house just before 2am on Tuesday.

Whanganui fire senior station officer Craig Gardiner said the house, which had been on the market, was "fully involved and threatening both properties either side".

A neighbouring house - whose occupants used a garden hose to protect it from the fire - sustained "quite a bit of heat damage".

"And it's actually broken the windows on that house," Gardiner said.

The couple who live at the neighbouring property told the Chronicle they were woken by the bright light of the blaze with flames pouring out the windows of the empty wooden villa.

Gary Simonson rang 111 before getting a hose from the back garden to douse the wall of their house while waiting for fire crews to arrive.

"It started to get really hot out there," he said.

Two of his bedroom windows broke in the heat, paint blistered and the plastic joiners between fibrolite melted.

The plastic spouting of a sleepout of a property on the other side melted as well.

Gardiner said firefighters laid hose lines to protect the neighbouring houses.

"We could see there was nothing really salvageable because the fire was coming out off every opening so we just worked on what we could save."

The Kaikokopu Rd house was vacant at the time and on the market. Photo/ Stuart Munro

Firefighters were back at about 6am when smouldering behind a false ceiling flared up.

No one was injured in the fire and Simonson said the house had been empty for about six months and had not been maintained.

There was an open home last weekend with several people interested, he said.

The fire happened just over two weeks after another vacant building - on Victoria Ave - was also destroyed by an early morning blaze.

Police are still unable to say what caused that fire which destroyed a historical two-storey Victoria Ave property which had to be demolished the following day.