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Troels Sommerville / Things
All that was left of the mostly wooden house in East Tamaki after a major fire tore it to the ground.
Neighbors had to stop a man from rushing back to a burning house to get his car keys, as the multi-million dollar home, owned by a businessman under investigation, burned to the ground.
It took firefighters nearly two hours to bring the fire under control after they were called to the Point View Drive, East Tamaki address at around 8.37 p.m. Wednesday.
Property records show that the house is owned by Chinese-Canadian businessman Xiao Hua Gong, also known as Edward Gong, who is accused of running a $ 202 million pyramid scheme. Stuff he has tried to contact Gong through his lawyer.
The man who was in the home at the time of the fire was alerted by a smoke alarm and rushed next door for help.
READ MORE:
* A fire destroys a house in East Tamaki Heights, Auckland.
* Chinese businessman accused of fraud has $ 70 million frozen in New Zealand
* Mother, son and company fined $ 3 million for suspicious transfers on behalf of Edward Gong
“I was sitting in my office and a guy came to my door and he was knocking so hard he almost knocked it down,” said neighbor Paul Ireland.
Ireland said he had to stop the panicked man from running back to the burning house to collect the car keys.
“He wanted me to help him try to get the car in tow before the fire department arrived, but it was too hot.”
Ireland said she hadn’t met the man before and, as far as she could tell, it had been the man’s first night in the house.
Troels Sommerville / Things
It took firefighters two hours to control the fire.
Sarah Lovey and her father Peter were evacuated from their house next door as emergency services battled the fire.
“That [the house] it was just an orange wall, like in the movies, ”Sarah said.
The couple then faced anxious wait at a roadside house to find out if the fire had spread to their home, but they were safe.
Fire officer Len Opai said crews had to stop the fire from spreading to vegetation next to the house.
He said the fire destroyed so much of the house that it was difficult to tell where it had started.
All that was left of the four-bedroom house was a brick wall and a fireplace.
“You can’t even tell if it was one or two stories,” Opai said.
Chinelle Kumar / Supplied
The large house fire on Point View Drive, East Tamaki, could be seen around the area.
Because the nearest cross-linked water supply was almost a kilometer away, firefighters had to pump water from pools in neighboring houses.
Party house
Neighbors said the property had been empty for years and was being used as a party house.
Linda Melrose, who lives about 50 meters from the road, said there were regularly big parties where young people took to the streets.
“Sometimes there were 50 cars parked on the street and we would go out in the morning and there were broken bottles,” Melrose said.
But he said there had been no problem in the past year after he complained to the owners.
Instead, the house had recently been marketed on Booked.net as a boutique hotel.
