A Fire and Emergency New Zealand (Fenz) spokesman said a neighbour called emergency services to the fire at the rural Seal Point Rd property, near the corner with Highcliff Rd at Sandymount, about 4.30am. No-one was injured in the fire and there were no people at home at the time of the incident, he said. The fire had been largely extinguished by 8.30am.
By this time, the southern wing of the 250sqm home, which contained a garage and bedrooms, had been gutted by the blaze. Crews used pumps to draw water from a pond at the property to battle the blaze.
A Dunedin firefighter at the scene said they were very fortunate the pond, which he believed to be spring-fed, contained a large volume of water, as there were no mains hydrants nearby. The Fenz spokesman said the cause of the fire was unknown yesterday, when fire investigators and a police officer from the Criminal Investigation Branch were on scene.
A police spokeswoman would not confirm if the fire was being treated as suspicious.
Property owner Trevor Heaney was in Central Otago at the time of the fire but returned to the Otago Peninsula yesterday morning when he learned of the blaze. He said the wing of his home which had been gutted by the fire contained five of the property’s seven bedrooms, as well as a garage containing several vehicles.
A Dunedin police officer he had spoken with had confirmed the cause of the fire "could be suspicious," but Mr Heaney said he had no idea what could have caused the blaze.
"You just don’t know".
The same property was the site of another blaze in September 1993, when a rental home on the 32ha property had been destroyed by fire. Otago Peninsula Senior Constable Lox Kellas said the cause of that fire was not believed to have been suspicious.
