A fire at the University of Auckland law school building has now been extinguished.

A Fire and Emergency spokesperson said there had been a fire at the University and six fire trucks were at the scene on Short Street. The call to 111 came through at about 2.40pm.

FENZ said the fire was now extinguished but crews will stay near the building this afternoon.

Staff and students were seen going in floor by floor, starting with level 6, to retrieve any belongings left behind

A student who was evacuated from the fourth floor of the building said it seemed the fire started on level two.

Police were at the scene talking to students who have been evacuated.

Student Talisha Lal said when the fire alarm went off she, and other students, thought it was a drill.

Lal said once she was out of the building, she could see smoke.

More to come…

~ RNZ 

An Auckland teacher has had her registration cancelled after recording explicit videos of herself urinating on the floor of a classroom and on a student’s belongings.

The New Zealand Teachers Disciplinary Tribunal found Lisa Marie Edmondson had committed serious misconduct.

The school was alerted to the content after the deputy principal of the school was approached by a member of the public who had come across a video on TikTok and recognised the setting. A search for the username led to a pornographic account.

The account contained more than 30 explicit videos which had been recorded at various locations over a period of two-and-a-half years.

In one of the videos, Edmondson appeared to urinate on the floor of a classroom with genitalia clearly visible. A second video showed the teacher urinating on a hat with a student’s name clearly visible in a lost property box.

The summary of facts stated there was an “ongoing urine smell” in some classrooms during the time of her employment which had been attributed to rats and mice. Bait stations had been set up during the school holidays but no rodent activity was noted. The tribunal said her students were “likely to have been adversely affected” due to evidence of an “unpleasant smell that required deep cleaning”.

While she was not visible in the videos, the teacher was recognised due to her voice and clothing.

Edmondson resigned in May 2023 after receiving notice of a formal investigation.

Following her resignation, Edmondson worked as a relief teacher at a second school before being invited to apply for a fixed-term position.

The tribunal found that Edmondson had failed to disclose her full employment history when applying for – and subsequently working at – a new school in 2023 and failing to inform her employer that she was the subject of a mandatory report and current investigation by the Teaching Council.

In her reflective statement, Edmondson acknowledged that she had let her students down and “was not the role model that I should have been for them”.

“I have accepted that the likelihood of returning as a teacher has ended. This has been a very difficult concept to accept because I loved teaching, loved being in the classroom and loved my students and their whānau.”

The tribunal noted Edmondson failed to address the conduct head on or express concern for her former students and colleagues.

Edmondson’s registration was cancelled and the former teacher was issued a formal censure. She was ordered to pay $3,255.87 towards the Complaints Assessment Committee’s costs and $582 to the Teaching Council.

In a statement to Stuff, Edmondson said she had no choice but to accept the ruling, but regretted her actions.

“During a two-year period which covers this time I was suffering from extreme anxiety, I can’t explain why I did it other than self sabotage and treating myself badly for things that had happened. By the time it was reported, I really did not even remember and hadn’t done anything else.”

Her actions had impacted her children and her ability to provide for them.

“I can’t change what I have done, but can make sure it never happens again.”

~ RNZ

A diabetic patient collapsed and died in a Waikato Hospital stairwell after a delay getting urgently needed food.

The 79-year-old had a head injury and no pulse when he was found unconscious and alone by a passing nightshift doctor.

It was more than an hour after a nurse had gone to get him a sandwich to lift his blood sugar.

The Health and Disability Commission has just released a report severely critical of the care the man received in December 2019.

Waikato Hospital now makes sure the ward fridges are always stocked with snacks for diabetics.

The man, who had mild dementia and reduced mobility, was in the cardiac care unit after a heart attack.

The commission’s report said at about 9.30pm, he received a falling blood sugar reading of 4.4mmol/L and told a nurse he was worried about it.

At that level, his family had told nurses he could become unsteady on his feet.

The nurse went to get him a sandwich but there were none in the ward fridge so she had to go to another ward.

When she returned 10-15 minutes later he was not in his room so she left the sandwich by his bed.

Ten minutes later he was still not there and she wrongly assumed he was in the toilet.

A search for him did not begin for 55 minutes, the report said.

In reality, he had left his room and was last seen on CCTV footage at the snack machine.

He had walked past the nurses station and had been passed by seven staff members, none of whom appeared to check on him, the report said.

He had then gone out a fire exit and was not found until the passing doctor found him unconscious. He got help and tried to resuscitate him but could not.

By then the man’s blood sugar was just 1.8mmol/L, the report said.

Reaction from family and expert

In a written response to the commission after its initial findings, one of the man’s family members wanted to thank the health professionals who found him in “a severe hypoglycaemic crisis” and tried to save him.

“I can only imagine what it must have been like to stumble across a lost patient dying in a stairwell late at night.”

Health NZ had failed to keep the man safe, the family member said.

An expert nurse who reviewed the case, told the commission the man’s nurse should have made sure he ate the sandwich, especially because he experienced some memory loss and could have forgotten one was coming.

“Administering this very important snack is similar to administering medicine – you have to stay and watch the patient consume it,” the expert nurse said.

The initial delay in getting food was not the nurse’s fault but she should have checked if the man (Mr A) was there by knocking on the bathroom door when she returned.

“Not communicating with Mr A led to a cascade of terrible events,” the expert nurse said.

Waikato Hospital carried out its own adverse event review after the man’s death, the report said.

It found if the nurse had not had to go to another ward for a sandwich it would have allowed the man to get food more quickly and reduced the risk of him leaving the ward.

When his wife brought the man to the ED she had his medicine, his diabetic kit and his diabetic record book.

She had talked to staff many times about his needs.

But the family member told the commission the family was overlooked and not communicated with properly.

Very poor care

Deputy commissioner Carolyn Cooper gave her condolences to Mr A’s family.

“Mrs A was closely involved in her husband’s care, and his sudden death has been traumatic for her and the family,” she said.

Cooper found some of what happened was a severe departure from the expected level of care, and when it came to nursing management of his diabetes, it was “very poor”.

She was critical of the lack of food on the ward, the lack of communication with the man to make sure he had eaten, the delay in the search for him and the lack of a system to alert staff when a patient left the ward.

Health New Zealand’s response

Waikato Hospital now makes sure the fridges in all its cardiac units are checked to ensure there are enough snacks for patients with diabetes.

It has given staff more diabetes and dementia management training, with at risk patients now placed closer to the nurses station.

There is an alert system on the unlocked doors at the fire exit stairs.

In a response to questions from RNZ, Waikato Hospital’s chief medical officer Margaret Fisher said it had apologised to the family for the distress and the lasting impact from the incident.

The hospital accepted the commission’s findings that it did not meet the standard of care.

It had many of the improvements mentioned in the report and was also looking at creating a patient-tracking system in acute care areas, she said.

The hospital did not answer RNZ’s questions about how well staff the ward was on the night the man died.

~ RNZ