The Fire Service was called to a house fire on Cape Saunders Rd, Papanui Inlet, shortly before 11am on Thursday. The wooden house was destroyed.
"This is a lesson for everyone," Southern regional safety fire officer Barry Gibson, of Dunedin, said.
"It is an accidental fire, but avoidable."
Ash from an incense stick lit by the male tenant the previous night was the cause of the fire and it was fortunate the home was empty at the time of the blaze.
"The good thing was that no lives were lost.
"There were no smoke alarms in the house and had this happened in the night, when someone was sleeping in the house, it could be a totally different situation.""We could have been looking a fatality."
The fire was spotted by someone on the other side of the inlet, and the male tenant later returned to the property only to find the home destroyed.
"He was very upset, and lost everything he had in the house."
Mr Gibson said the lesson from this fire was that incense could "be dangerous if you don't do it correctly".
"Ash falling off the end of the stick can sometimes have hot embers ... and when they fall they can sit there dormant for a long time and will eventually set fire to whatever is underneath."
Sculptor Nick Duval-Smith, who used to live at the house and had a studio there, said he had not lived there for years.
His brother-in-law had been living at the house.
He was horrified to arrive home about lunchtime, after leaving the house at 9.20 that morning, to find it burned down.
"He lit the incense the night before, and to all intents and purposes it looked like it was out.
"It wasn't even smoking or anything when he left the house."
His brother-in-law, who was uninsured, had lost all of his possessions in the fire and was still in shock last night, he said.
