A fire that erupted in a Wellington hostel, killing at least six people, is being investigated as arson by New Zealand’s police, who have started a homicide inquiry.
Nobody has been arrested, Inspector Dion Bennett said on Wednesday. He would not say why officers believed the fire was deliberately lit, or whether accelerants were used.
A day after fire ripped through the 92-room hostel there is still no definite number of people missing, Bennett said. The current total of those unaccounted for is less than 20, including the six confirmed killed, he said.
“Gut feeling is that yes, it may climb,” said Bennett of the death toll.
Investigators have yet to learn if the source of the blaze was a couch fire that occurred two hours earlier. “As part of our inquiries, we will be seeking to confirm any link between that couch fire and the subsequent fatal fire,” Bennett said in an earlier statement.
The fire broke out at 12.25am on Tuesday, prompting dozens of residents of the accommodation, called Loafers Lodge, to flee their beds. Some jumped from windows of the four-storey building, and five were rescued from the roof before the fire was brought under control at about 6am.
Bennett said not everyone who was at the hostel had registered themselves as safe with the authorities, and urged those who escaped the building to contact the police. Some residents left their phones in their rooms when they fled.
Small groups of police officers entered the charred hostel building for the first time on Wednesday afternoon to begin a scene examination, Bennett said. Entry had not been possible earlier due to concerns about the building’s safety, and the level of contaminants searchers are exposed to is being monitored, he added.
The fire service earlier said there were no sprinklers in the building – it was not legally required to have them – and there have been conflicting reports about when and whether alarms sounded at the time the blaze began.
The hostel in Newtown – near central Wellington – was home to a mix of short- and long-term tenants, including workers at the nearby hospital. Murray Edridge, the head of the Wellington City Mission, told Radio New Zealand said that clients of the charitable organisation were among those who lived at the hostel. Nine residents were being supervised by New Zealand’s corrections agency.
New Zealand’s government will investigate whether building regulations for accommodations like Loafers Lodge are fit for purpose, prime minister Chris Hipkins told reporters at parliament on Wednesday.
“I have asked the minister for housing to look particularly at issues around building regulation, to see whether there is anything we should be doing right at this point,” Hipkins said.
The prime minister said a friend of his from university was among the missing. Those who died have not been formally named.
Chief coroner Anna Tutton said on Tuesday that identification of the bodies could be a “painstaking, slow” process.
