The Fire Service says an inferno that gutted a derelict Wellington house likely had a "helping hand'', while a homeless man known to have squatted there remains missing.
Demolition crews were today working to stabilise the large wooden house on Allenby Terrace in central Wellington after it caught fire about 2pm on Wednesday.
About 40 firefighters brought the blaze under control and kept it from spreading to neighbouring houses, one as close as half a metre away.
The house was understood to be abandoned.
A Wellington police spokeswoman said several homeless people known to frequent the house had been tracked down and there was nothing to suggest anyone had been in it when it went up.
However, asbestos has been found at the scene and until that was dealt with, fire and police inspectors would not be able to confirm there were no bodies inside.
The cause would also not be established until then but it was likely it was arson, the spokeswoman said.
Fire safety officer Clive Hutchings said police and fire investigators were hoping to access the building this afternoon once it had been made "as safe as possible''.
"The roof collapsed and at the same time that exposed the chimneys, so we had a couple of chimneys left unsupported, wafting in the breeze,'' he said.
A demolition firm was this morning working to deal with the exposed chimneys and remove the asbestos.
Mr Hutchings said he would not want to hazard a guess about the cause of the fire without seeing the site, but because the house was abandoned it had not been connected to power or gas.
"It's more than likely that the fire had a human hand, whether accidental or deliberate, in going,'' he said.
"I'm not really expecting to find that the fire was caused by a short circuit - it's probably going to be that it's had a helping hand somewhere along the line.''
Mr Hutchings said the building had been "burnt out once'' so fire safety officers would be looking to see if any new areas had been burnt out.
Zachariah Wilton, then 19, was jailed last February for two years and three months after deliberately setting the house alight while it was still occupied in 2009.
