UPDATED 5.00PM: Fire safety and police are inspecting a bedroom in a Te Wati Street house to try and determine why it caught fire this afternoon.

Greerton and Tauranga Fire Brigades were called to the Te Maunga address about 3.05pm.

Firefighters at Te Waiti Street. Photos: Andrew Campbell.

Neighbours heard a window breaking, saw smoke, and used a garden hose until fire fighters arrived.

Scene commander Aaron Waterreus says the fire was put out using a single low pressure hosereel. The fire was in a flat in the top storey of the house separated off the main residence by a fire wall. There is also a flat under the building.

The top flat where the fire started is uninhabitable, but the rest of the hose is expected to be habitable by tonight once power is restored.

'It's being ventilated by fan to get the smoke out,” says Aaron.

Water damage to the rest of the house is very light.

'There's some pretty good fire fighters here in Tauranga,” says Aaron.

The cause at this stage remains unknown.

'I never heard a smoke alarm sounding inside,” says Aaron 'It's important that there are smoke alarms in the home in the event of a fire. Had the fire happened at night it might have been a quite different story.”

EARLIER: Northern Fire Communications shift commander Paul Radden says firefighters were called after multiple reports of a house fire, but it has since been confirmed that the blaze is confined to a bedroom.

'We have three crews in attendance who are at work with hoses and reels,” says Paul.