Alicetown community centre damaged by early morning fire

RNZ photo by Phil Pennington

Report from RNZ
An overnight fire has significantly damaged Alicetown’s Community Centre in Lower Hutt.

Four fire engines were sent to the blaze in the Transition Towns Community Centre early this morning, Fire and Emergency said the fire was well involved by the time they arrived at 2.30am.

A spokesperson said they could not say if it was fireworks related.

A fire investigator will be at the building this morning to try to determine the cause of the fire.

Transition Towns Lower Hutt co-ordinator Pam Crisp said the house had been a special space for the community.

“It’s been used for… decades by all sorts of groups in the community across the Hutt Valley, including addiction groups, and sustainability,” she said.

Transition Towns – an organisation focusing on social change and sustainability – ran some activities there, said Crisp. But as it was owned by Hutt City Council, several community groups also rented it.

“Alcoholics Anonymous groups, or knitting groups, or people looking at philosophy and life skills… there’s a toy library there that operates on Saturday mornings. It’s certainly an important part of the community and culturally as well,” she said.

Transition Towns member Bruce Anderson said the council would decide what to do with the damaged property. “It looks perfectly repairable in the sense that it’s basically only an open space that has been heavily damaged,” he said. “Two thirds of the house, three quarters of it remain sound.”

As of now, however, the house was “unusable”, he said.