1News presenter Melissa Stokes has the story of Merv Neil, a firefighter who survived the horrific 2008 explosion in Tamahere.
It was a Saturday afternoon in April 2008. At Tamahere School, the annual Pumpkin Gala was in full swing – an event that would later become vital to the survival of fire crews who were about to walk into a death trap.
Merv Neil was on shift at the Hamilton Fire Station that day. At around 4pm, he was driving one of two trucks to check out an alarm at the Icepack Coolstore in Tamahere.
The eight men arrived to find no sign of fire and were cleared to enter the building.
But the coolstore was a ticking time bomb, and 400kg of a highly inflammable refrigerant was about to explode. There were no signs warning it was in use on the site. Neil remembers the moment of the explosion.
"When it went bang, I had my back to the doorway, facing back out to the appliance and when it went bang I just initially turned my head and saw the wall just explode out with a jet of flame and then all of a sudden I got belted from behind with the pressure.
"The building basically exploded, the roof went up by all accounts, it went up 30 metres in the air."
Those gala-goers were the first to respond. Rushing over from the neighbouring school, a nurse and doctor were among them.
Neil said he felt relief as he saw them coming: "We saw a whole band of people running towards us, it was unbelievable. Twenty to 30 people running towards us which was pretty good for me."
His experience came to the fore and he gave life saving instructions. Neil, who hadn't yet realised how badly he was burnt, stood and watched as the coolstore spewed out its contents - including $25 million worth of cheese.
"It was like pouring a ladle of gold , it was liquid cheese... so I said to the head doctor there, I said, 'Mate you're going to have to shift all these people, this wall is not going to stay, we have to move otherwise it's going to collapse on us'."
Moments later, it did. Neil stood to watch his favourite fire engine burn, before finally giving his own burns some attention.
"I didn't think my burns were as great as what they were, [but] I had as it turned out full thickness burns. On the way to the hospital, I thought, 'This is going to be a little bit of time off work'.
"Even when my family got there the lady said to me, 'Say some nice things to your family, we are going to take over your breathing'.
"What she should have told me was, 'We're going to knock you out', because I just said, 'It's only heavy sunburn, I'll be okay'.
"Then they took over my breathing and it was like blackness."
He'd stay in a coma for 10 weeks, suffering burns to 71% of his body.
Medical staff were unsure if he'd make the journey to Middlemore Hospital's burn unit: "In their eyes, they thought that I was not going to make it. But Alice, my partner, she was very insistent that, 'You go with him, he'll fight'."
While the firefighter was in a fight for his life, the blaze raged on for days. It was a story that featured heavily in the news. A good friend of mine was deployed to cover the fire for 1News and remembers driving to Tamahere for weeks after.
She says she'll never forget the size of the fire on the night it happened.
"It was massive, and just seemed to keep going and going."
Of the eight crew there that day, Derek Lovell was killed in the explosion and the rest left with various injuries. A terrible day for the Hamilton Fire Station. But my friend says the station could not have been more welcoming to her in such a great moment of pain.
"We were invited into the fire station and at the press conference the day after it happened, I remember feeling quite teary when the fire commander became emotional describing what had happened.
"Despite what happened to their mate they were so professional – but also very human."
Neil missed his mate Derek's funeral and much of the aftermath of the fire.
Instead, he endured six months in hospital, operations, skin grafts, learning to walk again and becoming something of an example in the burns unit for just keeping on. One story in particular sticks with him.
"There was a young fella that came to hospital, he was severely burnt, he got caught in a cherry picker that got too close to high power wires, he lost an eye, an ear, his arms were fused, couldn't feed himself, couldn't do anything for himself.
"He said to me, if he could get out of that window he was jumping – and I said, 'Don't be silly, they can do all this stuff for you'.
"It was mainly myself and one nurse who sort of looked after him a little bit and between the two of us we sort of got together."
A couple of years later, the man asked to come and see Neil.
"He brought his new girlfriend and baby and he turned up with the nurse and, man, that was so cool.
"He said, 'I've been invited to go for an interview at the burns conference up in Auckland because of you... the amount of time you spent with me, you came up and saw me every day when you were in hospital so I thought, the least I can do was to try and return something to the people who helped save me'.
"That sort of gave me a bit of a buzz actually," Neil said. A firefighter for 37 years, he's not one for being soppy.
Neil said he's never had flashbacks or nightmares about the fire: "It happened and you move on."
Two and a half years later, on Christmas Day 2010, he was back at work.
He joked: "There is not much out there for burnt old firemen."
All the crew from that day returned to the service in some form. Except Derek Lovell.
"Hopefully it never ever gets repeated but in our job you can never guarantee anything, you practice being as safe as possible because we all want to go home at end of the day," Neil said.
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