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17-05-2023
WELLINGTON: New Zealand was in shock on Tuesday after a “worst nightmare” fire at a hostel in the capital Wellington left at least six people dead and 11 others missing.
The Loafers Lodge hostel in Newtown, in Wellington’s south, caught alight just after midnight on Tuesday. By dawn, the top floors of the building were charred black.
The Prime Minister, Chris Hipkins, who visited the scene on Tuesday morning, said at least six people had died, and that number could rise. “I understand six confirmed previously and it looks like there are likely to be more,” he said. The fire is among New Zealand’s most deadly blazes in the last fifty years.
With the building’s roof collapsed and parts of it highly unstable, authorities have warned that it will take some time to retrieve and identify all of the bodies, and relatives face a long, difficult wait for news.
Fire and emergency incident controller Bruce Stubbs on Tuesday afternoon said that they had located the bodies of six people, but had not yet been able to retrieve them. He said parts of the building’s structure and much of its roof had collapsed, and emergency services had not been able to search the entire building. Eleven people remain unaccounted for.
Loafer’s Lodge had previously been used as an emergency housing provider. The building was named by the Ministry of Social Development in a list of emergency housing providers released in 2021.
The housing crisis in New Zealand means a growing number of homeless people are housed long-term by the government in motels and hostels.
The Loafers Lodge offered basic, affordable rooms with shared lounges, kitchens and laundry facilities to people of a wide range of ages. Some were placed there by government agencies and were considered vulnerable because they had little in the way of resources or support networks. Others were shift workers or nurses working at the nearby hospital.
Social service agencies including Wellington City Mission have said they had clients housed in the building, which advertises itself as providing affordable long- and short-term accommodation.
Marie Murphy, the hostel’s property manager, told Stuff the residents were a mix of people. “We’ve had doctors, nurses, unemployed people, meat workers and hospital staff. All sorts of people. A real variety of people … There’s a lot of full-time people. A lot have been there longer than I’ve been there,” Murphy said. (Int’l News Desk)
