SkyCity fire: The Japanese restaurant that became a sanctuary for weary firefighters

Friday, 25 October 2019

The SkyCity Convention Centre fire is now under control but there will still be flames visible for a while.

Each morning at 6am, J Woo opens the roller door to his Japanese restaurant and starts making sushi, five hours ahead of opening time.

Woo was working in his central Auckland kitchen as per usual on Tuesday, when thick smoke began to fill his shop. He didn't notice at first, because he was working out the back.

Finally he saw he had a problem.

J Woo, owner of Rakuten Japanese Cuisine in Auckland CBD, fuelled fire crews with his sushi.

'The restaurant was so full of smoke I couldn't see properly,' said Woo.

**READ MORE:

Fire crews are still dealing with flare-ups at the convention centre on Friday, after the fire broke out on Tuesday afternoon.

* SkyCity Auckland Convention Centre fire live: Flare-ups continue on day four

* Auckland SkyCity Convention Centre fire: 100,000 bees on nearby rooftop survive the smoke

Rakuten Japanese Cuisine in central Auckland was one of the businesses that gave fire crews a helping hand.

* The Detail: Salvaging the SkyCity convention centre will be a monumental task**

'The smell was really bad. It gave me a headache. Of course, there were no customers.'

A mobile canteen at the site has dished out many hundreds of meals to fire fighters. Members of the public also gave them pizza, burgers and fruit.

Woo realised just how disruptive the SkyCity Convention Centre fire was going to be. He opened his restaurant, Ratuken Japanese Cuisine on Kingston St, for fire crews fighting the blaze to take a break and have some food.

'I'm paying rent for this shop, so rather than wasting it, I wanted to give them rest,' he said.

Woo stayed open past his usual closing time, so firefighters could make the most of his restaurant. At the day's end, he still had about 20 packets of of sushi leftover, so he took them to the cordon and handed them over to emergency services.

The SkyCity fire which started at 1.10pm on Tuesday, is now in its fourth day.

Aucklanders had been 'very generous' to the crews fighting the blaze, donating pizzas, burgers, sushi and fruit, said Ross Bay from Fire and Emergency NZ's Auckland Operational Support unit.

'We've been overwhelmed by the amount that people want to bring either to our stations or the incident itself,' Bay said.

'We're certainly grateful for the public making some contributions, which varies the diet a bit, and cheers everyone up because we know that people care about us.'

But although donations flooded in, the bulk of food for firefighters had come from the support unit, which has been running a mobile canteen at the scene since about 2pm on Tuesday.

The canteen had been continually staffed by volunteers for 72 hours now, serving 'many hundreds of meals' to fire fighters, police and ambulance staff, said Bay.

A police spokesperson said officers were 'very pleased' with the patience of Aucklanders over the past four days.

'We have reduced the cordon size on Fire and Emergency's advice and ask members of our community to be patient over the next 24 to 48 hours while cordons remain in place,' the spokesperson said.

'Police are not immediately aware of any evidence to suggest people have taken advantage of the situation.'