The life of Bonnie Carson was saved by a smoke alarm in her garage. Ironically, it was identical to the one she previously removed from her bedroom because it was too ugly. The incident occurred in a cottage at Loop Road Te Puna on Monday night.

Fortunately, the small building where the 19-year-old woman was sleeping stood only 60 metres away from the house where her parents live. The property is about 10 minutes travelling time away from Tauranga. After seeing the smoke and calling 111, she was told to get out and so she ran in bare feet to her parent's house down the driveway.

According Tauranga Fire Service officers, Ms. Carson was lucky to survive, since probably within one minute after she left the house, this would have been consumed by the flames. The authorities have warned the citizens that whether cheap or expensive, smoke alarms do make a difference between people’s life or death.

When the fire service came, there was no fire fighting to do. However, they cleaned the property up, in a safety and security process, assuring that the fire wouldn’t spread anywhere else. The lounge area from the house was specially affected and suffered smoke damage.