UNDER CONTROL: Moruya Fire and Rescue’s Rick Carlson and Surf Beach Rural Fire Service’s Ashley Blackman extinguish the remnants of the fire at Malua Bay yesterday. PHOTO: Josh Gidney
TWO people were hospitalised after a fire in a Malua Bay home yesterday morning.
Hazmat-equipped Moruya and Batemans Bay Fire and Rescue units arrived at the scene of the fire at 9.38am, closely followed by the Eurobodalla Rural Fire Service units, to find the basement of the home in Iluka Avenue well ablaze.
The fire was being fuelled and made more intense by burning methanol, and was starting to spread beyond the four rooms in the basement area.
The first fire crews arrived seven minutes after receiving the call.
The fire was completely extinguished one and a half hours after they arrived.
Smoke alarms alerted the two occupants, a 65-year-old man and 63-year-old woman, to the emergency.
Both were taken to Batemans Bay Hospital, the man with smoke inhalation and burns and the woman with smoke inhalation.
“The smoke alarms saved their lives and if we had got there any later we would have lost the house,” Fire and Rescue South Coast deputy commander Inspector Kernin Lambert said.
No other structures or residents were in danger from the fire.
