That is what relieved Ōtoromiro Hotel resident Emily Banfield said about the establishment’s fire alarm system, which was put to the test after a deep fryer caught fire.
Banfield has lived on site for the past year with her partner in an upstairs flat of the hotel in Governors Bay. She also serves as the building’s fire warden.
They were woken at 12.10am last Tuesday by the burglar alarm, followed 30 seconds later by the fire alarm.
The hotel’s security and emergency system is very sensitive and is activated at the slightest detection of motion.
Banfield got out of bed and headed downstairs to deactivate the alarms, thinking it was a false alarm.
As she went down the stairs she saw orange flames in the kitchen through a cubby hole.
“I quickly ran back upstairs and I said ‘the kitchen's on fire’, then (my partner) quickly put his contact lenses in and came downstairs,” Banfield said.
She rang 111 before calling the hotel’s owner Jeremy Dyer, who lives off-site.
The fire alarm system also automatically alerted the Governors Bay Volunteer Brigade.
She then stepped into her fire warden role and went through the evacuation process.
She checked the building for other occupants but found there were no guests staying that night.
The fire had reached the kitchen roof and smoke had started to spread up stairs by the time her partner came downstairs with a fire extinguisher.
He blasted it once, which did little to dull the flames.
“I think it would be a very different story if they didn’t have this incredible fire alarm system. It was definitely pretty scary.
“It 100% saved our lives, there’s no question about that.”
Volunteer firefighters arrived soon after.
The fire was caused by a bench-top deep fryer, which is meant to turn itself off after a certain amount of time, but failed to do so.
Dyer said the issue had been overlooked when the hotel was closed on Monday.
He said $500,000 had been invested into the hotel’s Type 4 fire alarm system over the past 10 years, with heat and smoke detectors installed throughout the hotel.
“The impact of the fire could have been much, much worse had the system not worked and had (my partner) not put the fire out,” Dyer said.
Banfield said every other time the fire alarms had been activated it was a false alarm.
Fire chief Doug Burt said the outcome could have been far worse had they not proactively extinguished the fire.
“(My partner) will hate to admit it," Banfield said, "he will play it down as much as he can but he absolutely saved the day.
“I feel grateful it wasn’t any worse than what it was, but it’s definitely a bit of an eye opener. You hear about people dying in house fires and quite often you scratch your head and think how?
“But that gave me a first-hand taste of how it can happen so easily.”
