Two people were taken to Tauranga Hospital suffering smoke inhalation last night after a pot was left on the stove in a house with no smoke alarms.

Tauranga Fire Brigade and St John Ambulance were called to the flat in Waihi Road at 11.15pm.

'One of the occupants was trying to sterilise their cutlery in a pot on the stove, plastic handled knives and fork sets,” says Tauranga senior station officer Nigel Liddicoat today.

'He put them into boiling water and went up to the bedroom, or went away and they boiled dry and then started melting the plastic.”

There were no working smoke alarms in the house.

St John Ambulance says the man and woman were mildly affected and were taken to Tauranga Hospital for assessment.

There were also no working smoke alarms in the Orkney Road home that caught fire 8am on Thursday, says Nigel.

The rental property has a woodbox in the wall next to the fire place.

'The integrity of the fire box had been compromised over the years,” says Nigel.

'The woodbox has some stuff stored in it that caught fire and began to burn up inside the wall cavity.

'Fortunately the occupants were still at home, they hadn't gone out and they saw the flames in this woodbox and reacted appropriately.

'They didn't have any working smoke alarms in the property and if the same incident had occurred in the small hours of the morning, we would have been dealing with a significantly different scenario.

'They would have had limited egress, because it's the area of the house with the front door, the back door. They would have been coming out windows, if they came out at all.”

Smoke alarms are not about saving property, they are about saving lives, says Nigel.