Shop workers and witnesses seized the initiative and doused a fire in a garden plot at a shopping centre near Auckland Airport this afternoon, stopping the flames reaching cars parked close by.
Eyewitness Thomas Coffey told 1 NEWS he filmed the fire at the Airport Shopping Centre on John Goulter Ave on his smartphone while his wife Alice called 111 at 4.38pm to report the fire.
His vision shows the fire in a plot of shrubs dividing the carpark and the roadway through the shopping centre.
"The Warehouse staff quickly grabbed their extinguishers and started to fight the blaze. Almost but not quite extinguishing it, spraying the contents from three or four large scale power extinguishers," Mr Coffey wrote in an email to 1 NEWS.
"My wife ran into the cafe to get another one where the shop owner/worker said they didn’t have one."
Another man grabbed a rubbish bin and was filling it with water from the toilets nearby and tipping it on the fire, Mr Coffey wrote.
"The frightening thing was that a car in the car park was just millimeters from the flames. All witnesses and Good Samaritans battling the blaze were afraid of the car catching alight."
An Auckland Airport fire engine arrived within two to three minutes of the call, Mr Coffey said.
The video shows a firefighter dousing the smokey remains of the fire, which the witnesses had all-but extinguished.
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