Emergency services responded to a vessel fire at around 1.10am on Tuesday, finding the boat fully engulfed in flames on arrival. The blaze had taken complete hold well before crews reached the scene.
The sole person on board escaped without injury, getting away from the burning vessel on a small dinghy. Police confirmed they were working to establish the cause of the fire.
For Beach Haven local Kerri Walker, the night began with a series of puzzling sounds that pulled her from sleep at around 1am. Her first instinct was to reach for an ordinary explanation.
"I thought it was just a guy who lives over the water letting fireworks off," she told RNZ.
Other possibilities ran through her mind as the noises continued. She considered whether someone might be shooting rabbits in Hobsonville, or whether a gun was involved. It was only when a helicopter began circling overhead that she finally got up to investigate.
"I thought 'if that stops over me, I'm getting up', and then I noticed all my curtains were all lit up with flickering orange..."
Looking outside, she found a boat fully engulfed in flames on the water.
"It even shook the house," she said.
The helicopter's persistent circling unsettled Walker more than the flames themselves. She knew the vessel was beyond saving, but the thought that someone might be unaccounted for in the water was far harder to shake.
"We couldn't go back to bed, we were just so worried, because the helicopter was still flying around, I thought they're looking for someone. We've had some rescues before like that, looking for people in the water, I was just so worried about that really, more than anything, I knew the boat couldn't be saved," Walker said.
When word came through that the person on board had made it out safely, Walker said the relief was real. "It's so sad, but so relieved that there's no deaths," she said.
Walker described the whole ordeal as feeling like it was happening in slow motion. By the time she woke again later that morning, the boat had disappeared entirely from the water.
