Palmerston station officer Craig McCaw said a villa in Stour St was set on fire about 2pm as an exercise for 15 firefighters.
The old family villa had outlived its usefulness, any items of value had earlier been removed through partial demolition, and a new house would later be built on the site.
Fire crews from Palmerston and Waikouaiti extinguished the fire with guidance from six trainers from Dunedin, and other senior staff provided safety support, he said.
The exercise provided valuable training, and firefighters wore breathing apparatus inside the five-bedroom villa as it burnt. The building had a 3.6m high stud.
The trainers took four firefighters at a time inside the burning villa to teach them different firefighting techniques and to reveal first-hand how a fire spread in a burning house.
``It tracks up the walls and then it leaps across the ceiling,'' Mr McCaw said.
