Fire and Emergency New Zealand shift manager Lyn Crosson told the Otago Daily Times it appeared people had been "playing silly buggers", resulting in a volunteer firefighting crew from the Alexandra station being called out twice within two hours.
The first call came in about 6.30pm on Tuesday, firefighters seeing smoke coming from one side of the toilet block located close to the playground on arrival at the scene, Ms Crosson said.
"They found a toilet roll dispenser on fire. They tagged it as suspicious as toilet rolls usually don’t self-combust ... Somebody’s obviously been playing silly buggers."
There was little damage to the building itself, and the firefighting crew left in half an hour or so, after advising a fire investigator and police of the incident, she said.
However, less than two hours later, a second call came in, about 8.20pm, reporting another fire in a neighbouring public toilet block, close to the sports ground’s scoreboard.
"This one, the ... dispenser had been tried to be set on light, but it didn’t quite catch, so was out on arrival," Ms Crosson said.
In a statement, police confirmed they were investigating events from Tuesday night, which were being treated as suspicious.
"If anyone has information that could assist our inquiries, they can contact 105 and quote file number 250604/2431," the statement said.
