died in the blaze on Freshney Place<\/a>\u00a0in Hillpark, shortly before 7am on Monday.<\/p>\nThe pair had been living at the home with their friend, who survived the fire, and was in Middlemore Hospital recovering from serious burns,<\/p>\n
Ropitini-Fairburn had been a “loved member” of Kaihaka Kapa Haka group, founder and owner Eru Rarere-Wilton said.<\/p>\n
He noted Ropitini-Fairburn travelled to places, including China and Italy, to perform with the group.<\/p>\n
“Kiwa was my wife’s nephew and lived with us for a bit before moving into that house with his best friends.”<\/p>\n
Rarere-Wilton said he was at the hospital with other wh\u0101nau members of Ropitini-Fairburn, while they waited for his body to be released to them.<\/p>\n
“It’s all come as a shock. He was such a loving and beautiful soul and so talented.<\/p>\n
“He had an amazing singing voice and when we were in China they all called him the karaoke king.”<\/p>\n
Learning of the death of Ropitini-Fairburn and Marsters was “deepely saddening”, Rarere-Wilton said.<\/p>\n
Parents of the sole survivor of the fire spoke to journalists at the scene on Monday, and said they were “devastated” by the deaths of their son’s friends.<\/p>\n
Pana Rangitaawa, the survivor’s dad, said his son was expected to recover although he would need plastic surgery.<\/p>\n
“I don’t know what to say … I’m waiting for other family to arrive. We still don’t know what’s actually happened,” he said through his tears.<\/p>\n
He said his mother and his 91-year-old grandmother usually lived at the house along with the three others.<\/p>\n
Passerby saved man from fire<\/h3>\n
Jonathan Asafo, who lives two minutes from the fire scene, was on his way to drop off his son in daycare when he saw the flames.<\/p>\n
“I saw the whole house on fire and then I quickly reversed back and seeing as no one was on the road and no one knew the house was on fire, I quickly … drove up the driveway and I started tooting my horn and then calling, running around for any response.”<\/p>\n
He saw a truck in the driveway, and with flames coming out of the house he ran to the neighbour’s house and alerted them.<\/p>\n
By the time he returned, a survivor had made it onto the back lawn. He had been sleeping downstairs, but he feared for his two friends who had been sleeping upstairs, Asafo said.<\/p>\n
The young man was in shock, and the skin had burnt off his hands, Asafo said.<\/p>\n
He escaped the fire after hearing Asafo’s horn.<\/p>\n
“He quickly went through the back door … [he was] fully in shock.”<\/p>\n
Auckland councillor Daniel Newman, who had dealt with the family previously on storm water issues, said the deaths were devastating.<\/p>\n
He said the family were engaged members of the community.<\/p>\n
Police and fire investigators were still working to determine how the fire started.<\/p>\n
Source: RNZ<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Wh\u0101nau of the men killed in an Auckland house fire on Monday, say the pair were best friends who were “joined at the hip”. Kiwa Ropitini-Fairburn, 25, and Tony Marsters, 24,\u00a0died in the blaze on Freshney Place\u00a0in Hillpark, shortly before 7am on Monday. The pair had been living at the home with their friend, who […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":9777,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[174],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9776","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-nz-news"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9776","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9776"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9776\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9778,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9776\/revisions\/9778"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/9777"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9776"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9776"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9776"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}