'Am I being poisoned?': Downtown Aucklanders suffer in the SkyCity fire smoke
Thursday, 24 October 2019
Nights on Auckland's Victoria St West, which runs past the SkyTower and casino, are usually pierced with rants from its sizable homeless population. They accuse those spilling out of the casino of being 'effing polygamists' and worse.
The street's apartment dwellers, myself included, got bothered not by noise but nausea on Tuesday night – from breathing in fumes that closed doors and windows couldn't keep out. Toxic black smoke from a fire at the SkyCity Convention Centre moved the rough sleepers on. The gamblers went elsewhere too, as SkyCity Casino was evacuated as a safety precaution and remained closed.
The next morning, rough sleepers' microfleece nests remained empty. Normally hectic Victoria St West was all but empty itself. The few people outside pressed scarves and masks to their faces, squinting through thick smog-like haze.
'Am I being poisoned?' asked a woman, quite cheerfully, outside her apartment block. 'It feels like it. And all my stuff reeks of disgusting burning plastic.'
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Another local resident said she 'felt quite ill' when she woke up, due to the 'burning bitumen stench' that infiltrated her home overnight.
The massive fire at SkyCity's under-construction convention centre ignited on Tuesday afternoon and stripped the region of its firefighters. It blanketed downtown Auckland central in acrid smoke. Roads closed, businesses too; the city took on a rather apocalyptic air.
Rubberneckers amassed as close to the action as police would allow on Tuesday, filming firefighters in their aerial appliances blast the flames with water. Assistant area commander Dave Woon told media it was 'a very challenging fire to fight', and – indeed – it blazed on through the night.
On Wednesday morning, inside a convenience store on the corner of Federal St and Victoria St West, Paul Ewing and Karim Ayasrah compared footage they'd shot of the fire. Ewing had a dramatic video of flames against the night sky, chomping away at the convention centre's roof. Ayasrah had one shot on Tuesday, just after 1pm, showing a dark plume of smoke ballooning at speed then billowing towards him.
'The whole street went black in just two minutes,' he recalled, scraping his finger across the top of an ice cream fridge to show fine grime from the smoke that continued to seep under the door.
Ewing owns Good Times Coffee, on Federal St. The street was cordoned off on Wednesday, guarded by a cop in a heavy duty gas mask. Ewing's cafe, normally open between 6am and midnight, had been closed since Tuesday afternoon.
'You can smell the acrid smoke and there's a layer of soot over everything,' he said.
'We closed everything up but it's amazing how smoke gets in.'
Ewing reckoned he'd missed about 350 transactions by 9am. Despite being open – its entrance on Victoria St West – Ayasrah's convenience store hadn't had a single customer. On an average day he'd have served more than 150 by then.
I felt woozy after ten minutes in the store. Ayasrah gave me a sparkling water, on the house. The fire was showing a kind side of humanity: volunteers dashed about ferrying flat whites to hardworking police, firefighters, and St John personnel on Wednesday morning; a bar on Customs St West offered the emergency services a place to rest and eat for free.
By Wednesday afternoon the fire was still burning. Only 20 per cent of the convention centre's roof was left – the whole thing was expected to collapse – and a firefighter had been hospitalised with moderate injuries.
Ayasrah still hadn't had a single customer. Across the road from him, the manager of Corner Kebab and Chicken said she'd only served four.
'It's dead here!' declared Parul Chodha.
'This is really really bad for business, we've had to throw away so much food, the smoke makes everything dirty; one day like this does make a big difference for us.'
She said she'd barely been able to breathe on Wednesday morning, but had to keep the shop open because it was delivery day.
City Centre Convenience Store's manager Mohammad Alamleh estimated his shop's traffic had been cut by 80 per cent. Victoria St West was usually 'packed full' in the afternoon, he said.
His customers were SkyCity staff, construction workers, and students at a nearby English language school seeking lunch and afternoon tea. As those businesses were closed due to the fire, his was empty.
Victoria St West felt less apocalyptic, however, more like a smoggy day in Beijing. The haze was a lighter shade of grey and while pedestrians still wore masks, there were more of them about.
A few rough sleepers had returned and were snoring gently, microfleeces tucked snugly around their heads – presumably filtering out the remaining wafts of smoke.