A house bus that caught fire over the weekend was badly damaged, a Glenorchy rural firefighter says.
A Givealittle page was established on Sunday to raise money for Calder Houliston, who lost everything in Saturday’s fire.
Mr Houliston could not be reached for comment yesterday.
The Glenorchy crew was called to the incident in Priory Rd about 10.40am on Saturday.
Officer in charge of the incident Dale Jefcoate told the Otago Daily Times yesterday the fire was fully involved by the time the ‘‘severely under-crewed’’ Glenorchy brigade arrived.
‘‘It was quite a tough one for us because ... we’ve got a crew of our guys over in Canada at the moment ... and with the rugby being on there were a lot of people out of town too, so we were severely under-crewed, but we managed fine.’’
Mr Jefcoate said at the time the house bus was unoccupied, but Mr Houliston had been living in it and was at work when the fire started.
‘‘Unfortunately [Mr Houliston] had not long sold his house and had actually moved up to where the house bus was parked, just to take on a job up there, and shifted all his stuff up there and this has happened,’’ he said.
‘‘I’m certainly not a fire investigator, but talking to other people that live on the property ... they seem to think it was electrical.
‘‘Where the bus was, it’s obviously got a power supply to it from the house — it [the fire] actually tripped the power in the house.’’
The Givealittle page had raised $520 by yesterday afternoon.
