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WELLINGTON, New Zealand – At least six people are dead after an overnight fire broke out at a hostel in Wellington, New Zealand’s capital, Prime Minister Chris Hipkins said.
“This is an absolute tragedy,” Mr Hipkins told reporters in Parliament on Tuesday. “It’s a horrible situation.”
The cause of the fire is not yet known. There will be “some investigation” into the disaster, the prime minister said.
The dormitory does not have sprinklers, and the fire alarm does not go off automatically, Brendan Neally, a fire brigade spokesman, told Radio New Zealand. New Zealand’s building code requires sprinklers to be installed in newly constructed buildings, but not in older buildings.
The hostel passed a building inspection in March this year, which included a test of the building’s security system, Wellington City Council said.
Some of the lodge’s tenants, called Loafers Lodge, are clients of New Zealand’s social welfare agency. It has 92 rooms and was fully occupied at the time of the fire, officials said.
“The hallways are really skinny with these tight little stairs, so it broke my heart when I saw the news,” said Mark Lilly, who said he had moved out of the dorm two weeks earlier. They had arrived at the scene to find information about residents who had not answered their calls.
“There are a lot of elderly people who live on the upper floors who move very slowly and shouldn’t be put up there,” Mr Lilly added.
More than 50 residents fled the fire, and five others were rescued from the roof of the fourth dormitory, officials said. Four people were hospitalized, one of whom was seriously ill. More than 80 firefighters battled the blaze at its peak, and the fire was extinguished by about 6 a.m.
Mr. Neally said that 11 people are still at large. It is not yet clear how many people have died, as the building is not safe to enter, Inspector Dean Silvester, a police spokesman, said in a statement.
Drones are used to inspect buildings for structural damage.
The hostel is located in Newtown, a socially and ethnically diverse neighborhood less than a kilometer from downtown Wellington, where rapidly rising housing prices are affecting many students and low-income families.
Anthony Harris, a 36-year-old welder, said he lost all his belongings in the fire and did not know where he would sleep at night.
He said he ran from his room on the third floor when he woke up to the sound of someone yelling in the hallway. There were often false fire alarms in the dorms, he said, and he might have stayed in bed if he hadn’t noticed the smoke coming under the door.
Mr Harris said the hostel doors on the street could only be opened electronically, not manually. “We only went out because there was a man lying on the floor, holding the front door open, so he wouldn’t smoke,” he said.
The hostel’s residents include workers at a nearby hospital, homeless people, and New Zealanders who have been deported from Australia because of criminal charges.
“These are the accommodations where our government places the most vulnerable and most in need of support who cannot find a place to live because of the housing crisis,” said Filipa Payne, a spokeswoman for Route 501, an advocacy group that supports deportees. . Mrs. Payne said she has not been able to contact every tenant she knows in the building.
The Blaze is a “once in a decade” event for the city, said Nick Pyatt, fire and emergency district manager for Wellington. “This is our worst nightmare,” he added.
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