Still Smouldering The Sprott Fire's Lasting Impact

As The 50th Anniversary Looms, Lyn Demands An Inquest.

- Lynley Ward

Lyn McConchie rises early every day to feed her ocicat Thunder, before settling down in front of the computer on her Norsewood farmlet to write fantasy and crime books. But there’s a real-life story from nearly half a century ago that’s never far from her mind, when she risked her life, braving suffocating smoke and flames, to rescue elderly women trapped in a burning rest home.

It’s something that continues to haunt the 72-year-old author, who claims the seven victims of Wellington’s Sprott House rest home fire on July 26, 1969, needlessly perished in the ferocious early morning blaze.

The deadly fire was deemed an accident at the time, with fire investigators unable to determine the cause.

The tragedy led to major changes in fire regulations for rest homes and boarding houses across New Zealand, including the legality for fire drills, alarms and sprinklers.

But Lyn, who’s had major misgivings about the official finding for decades and even wrote a book about a spate of fatal fires in Wellington in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s, claims the inquest six weeks after the horror fire was a whitewash. She remains adamant the fire, that started as 19 elderly women lay sleeping, was deliberately lit.

“I’ve been outraged on their behalf for 50 years that they never got a decent hearing.

“They died and it was swept under the rug because some officials saving face was more important than their deaths,” Lyn says, adding she was never called as a witness, even though she was one of the first on the scene.