When fire crews in Wellington received the call that the Loafers Lodge hostel was burning, it took five minutes for the first truck to arrive.
In the early hours of Tuesday morning, residents who had been woken by false fire alarms in the past were now jolted awake by the very real and very thick smoke driving them towards the ground.
Several residents who escaped said they crawled their way out, relying on a small pocket of air about 20 centimetres above the floor to breathe.
While crawling on the ground, some managed to feel their way to the fire escape. One man told the ABC he felt that someone was laying across the door to hold it open for others.
The building that sits on a main road in New Zealand's capital has been a bank and a church.
Inside has been described as a rabbit's den of narrow hallways, with staircases and a single elevator leading from one floor to the next.
There are two emergency exits, but residents have reported that one had been out of order for several weeks.
Residents described the top level as a kind of mezzanine. Several people who had been asleep in their rooms on that level escaped to the roof. Some did not make it out at all.
Throughout the night, nearly 90 firefighters would attend the scene using the equipment on 33 trucks to eventually bring the flames under control.
But not all fire trucks carry the same equipment, and they don't all arrive on the scene at once.
The fire union has said a truck with a 32-metre ladder would have arrived sooner had it not been for protracted maintenance problems.
Two time-stamped videos obtained by the ABC from a neighbouring resident show how quickly the blaze escalated.
At 12:32am, black smoke can be seen billowing from the top left of the building.
Fifty minutes later, the top level of Loafers Lodge is fully alight.
Flames are licking the sides of the building and firefighters on the ground know people are trapped inside.
They have described walking into a nightmare scenario.
And they were forced to do it in the knowledge they did not have the full fleet of fire vehicles available to them.
The 32-metre ladder
Fire and Emergency New Zealand (FENZ) chief executive Kerry Gregory said his service deployed the appropriate resources to fight the fire, but conceded some equipment was missing and the fleet more broadly was riddled with maintenance issues.
"While Newtown's 32-metre ladder truck was off the run for maintenance, it was replaced by the normal relief appliance, which is a 17-metre truck," he said.
The fire boss said that, in a debrief, the firefighters who fought the hostel fire told him that change meant they "had to adjust their tactics".
The union did not agree that appropriate resources responded to the fire, saying:
"The type-5 [32-metre ladder] from Newtown would have been able to reach higher and further around and over the building, compared to the 17-metre type-4 that was the replacement."
A backup truck — the only other vehicle with a longer ladder in New Zealand's capital city — was brought across from another station.
FENZ said it arrived in eight minutes. The union says it took 14.
The New Zealand Herald reported that the backup truck managed to rescue five people off the roof using the ladder and basket.
"Despite the tragic loss of life, our firefighters did an excellent job of rescuing people, limiting the fire spread and ultimately extinguishing the fire," Mr Gregory said.
"We do, however, have challenges with an ageing fleet.
"The legacy condition of many of our stations and the fleet varies significantly from what we would consider fit-for-purpose vehicles to some that are barely safe to use, and the same applies to some of our stations.
"The condition of these cannot be underestimated."
FENZ said 27 per cent of its appliances were beyond their target asset life of 20 to 25 years.
Local media have reported the 32-metre truck that is broken down with maintenance issues has been out of service for more than 400 days, and firefighters from its home station have been keeping a diary tracking its maintenance issues and the time it's been out of action.
According to the diary, the truck spent just 12 days in service in 2021, 33 in 2022, and zero this year.
An entry from October last year listed a series of faults including "a leak from the boom waterway, repeated 'cage-slew' faults, a significant hydraulic leak" and "possibly best of all, the truck fuel tank capacity exceeds the fuel card limit".
There have been long-running disputes between FENZ and its firefighters, including over maintenance issues, but also pay and conditions.
Last year, there were a series of strikes where firefighters walked off the job.
The service is in the process of purchasing four new 32-metre-ladder trucks and one 44-metre-ladder truck. Mr Gregory said they were due to arrive at the end of 2024.
FENZ is conducting an operational review into the response to the Loafers Lodge fire, but says ultimately maintenance and fleet quality is a budget issue.
Top floor residents 'wouldn't have had a chance'
Questions about whether more residents could have been rescued have hit hardest among those close to the people who are still missing and who fear they are dead.
Police have so far retrieved five bodies from the rubble, with 99 people accounted for and fewer than 10 still missing.
Mark has been visiting the Loafers Lodge site, waiting for news of his mate Ken who he hasn't heard from since the fire.
Ken is a 65-year-old man who was living on the highest level of the lodge and who Mark described as a friend to everyone — always willing to share his tobacco.
Mark says there is no way his friend would have been able to get out on his own.
"When I think of Ken, no, he wouldn't have had a chance unless someone grabbed him and dragged him out and I don't think that happened," he said.
"Just to think what he would have gone through, it shouldn't have happened, it just sends shivers up my spine."
Mark lived at the Loafers Lodge for 12 months, in a room on the same floor that the fire started.
"There's ratbags and rascals everywhere. But we never had really any arsonists come through," he said.
Several residents have shared accounts of the less-than-ideal conditions inside the Loafers Lodge, including bed bugs, leaks, and faulty equipment.
Mark told the ABC the equipment in the third-floor kitchen was in need of work, and fire alarms went off regularly.
"The ovens are really old and they're not that clean. Oil fires used to start on them," he said.
"I've had to put an oil fire out. You get people [who] don't know what to do, so they'll just stand there and the fire will be going up the wall."
New Zealand Prime Minister Chris Hipkins has asked the housing minister to review building regulations for high-density accommodation in response to the Loafers Lodge fire.
"What we will be looking at closely is just the building regulations around higher-density accommodation like a hostel environment," he said on Wednesday.
On Friday, the 48-year-old man accused of setting the fatal fire appeared in court to face two counts of arson.
He will remain in custody until his next court hearing on June 19, while police continue their investigations and former residents wait for news.
