A Greytown woman has credited firefighters and Seven Sharp for saving her life following a house fire.
On Tuesday night, the programme broadcast live on television how quickly a house fire can take hold, with the home engulfed in flames within four minutes of the fire starting.
"Once you get to that three-minute mark, the chances are the fire's unsurvivable," Fire and Emergency New Zealand’s national fire risk management adviser, Peter Gallagher, told Seven Sharp at the time.
"Once your fire's grown to that size, the size of a rugby ball, anything bigger than that, you need to be on your way out of the house."
Fire and Emergency was behind the controlled house burn as part of a training exercise, as well as a timely reminder of the importance of smoke alarms and an escape plan.
The morning after the segment aired, Suzanne Fryer and her husband woke to their home on fire.
The fire started in a ceiling light heater. Within seconds, fire and smoke spread through the house.
"We heard glass smashing. My husband opened this door to find some sort of molten – we presume it was plastic – just pouring, pouring down [in the bathroom]," she said.
"We had watched the Seven Sharp programme and ... We heard the man say if the fire is bigger than a football, you will not be able to contain it and we just said 'ring 111'."
Fryer urged people to be prepared.
"Dial 111. Stay out. Don't go back in," she said.
"We did it and we're alive, our furbabies are alive, our house isn't destroyed.
"It's pretty awful and it's going to take a long time to fix, but we did everything right and that was really, really because of the programme."
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