"At first, there was just disbelief — and then you kind of just go, ‘OK, so this is the moment my life changes forever’."
When Susan Wardell arrived home to find smoke billowing from her St Leonards house on July 17, it was the worst day of her life.
But looking back, even after losing all their belongings, she now believes her family has been very fortunate.
Fate played into their hands.
"We were actually home earlier than usual because my daughter finished school earlier and I had a meeting cancelled.
"So, on a normal day, the fire would have been way more progressed than it was.
"There was already a big plume of smoke, but I think it was still only kind of just starting.
"We were the first ones to see it and call it in."
After Dr Wardell called Fenz, her husband Andrew called from his work to say he was getting alerts on his cellphone from the smoke alarms in their house telling him there was a fire.
"He called me, and I was like, ‘the house is on fire’, and he was like, ‘I know because I just got the notification on my phone’."
Dr Wardell said while it was good her husband got the fire alarm notifications on his phone, he too was in disbelief.
"If I hadn’t been there, he might have looked at it and gone, ‘Oh, well, that’s a weird glitch’.
"He wouldn’t necessarily have assumed it was definitely a real fire."
She said the fire started in the master bedroom, which had a large wardrobe containing sentimental items, family heirlooms, collections of art, clothing and family paperwork.
"That bedroom is just ash now."
"Just — very narrowly," she said.
"It’s kind of borderline. It will need very, very extensive repairs.
"Being an older home, a character home, our hope is to retain something of what it was."
She hoped the repairs would be completed within the next 10 months.
"It is our forever home, and loving the character of it makes it feel like it’s worthwhile getting the repairs done and getting it back to something like what it was, rather than just replacing it.
"There’s a long history in that place, and I guess that’s why people kind of recognise and care about it — that’s actually heartening in a strange way."
She said the family were renting a property in Dunedin until they could move back in.
In documents released to the Otago Daily Times, an investigation conducted by Fenz attributed the blaze to an electrical fault in ceiling-mounted infrared panel heaters in a rear bedroom.
It was thought the electrical failure caused molten material from the heater to fall on to a mattress and carpet below.
"However, given the level of destruction, exact identification of the failed device is not possible," the fire investigator reported.
