A woman walks among the firefighters who extinguished a fire in her Glenleith, Dunedin, house yesterday.
Senior Station Officer Robbie Torrance, of Dunedin Fire Station, said a ''thick, black column of smoke'' was billowing from the Garden Pl house when firefighters from Dunedin, Willowbank and Lookout Point stations arrived.
As a car was parked in the driveway, firefighters assumed people were inside the house, he said.
''We didn't muck about. We knocked the front window out and did some aggressive work to make sure no-one was home.''
The house was empty, he said.
The firefighters initially thought chimney insulation had caught fire but when the owner arrived, she told them workmen had recently used a heat gun in the house.
''We are 90% sure it's the cause.''
An area appeared to have smouldered for a few hours before it ignited and about 5sq m of a second-storey room was damaged, he said.
