While the cause of the house fire in Gerringong last night is still under investigation, the affected residents are overwhelmed by the generosity and support of their neighbours and the Gerringong community [House destroyed by fire in Gerringong].

“People that we’ve never met have written us letters of support and are offering accommodation,” says Lisa Page, who has lived in the house with her partner for one year.

“We’d like to thank everyone. 

“Most importantly we can’t thank everyone enough from the emergency services for working so hard to put the fire out and to save our neighbours' houses.”

Over 60 firefighters responded to the incident just after 7.30pm last night and had it under control by midnight.

“The first crews arrived a short time after [7.30pm] with a fully involved structure fire on the second and third storey impacting houses on all sides,” says Gerringong Rural Fire Brigade’s Incident Controller, Aaron Cochrane.

“Crews immediately got to work.

“We don’t know the cause at this stage. 

“Thankfully no one at the property was injured during the incident.”

Mr Cochrane says the fire was quite a complex incident and they had to attack it from three different streets to contain it on every side.

“We needed about 150m of hose from each direction to attack the fire,” he says.

“We had water pressure issues due to it being on the side of a hill.

“There were fire crews from across the Illawarra and Shoalhaven that responded due to the complexity of the incident along with NSW Police and NSW Ambulance.

“We were also ably assisted by a few off-duty Fire and Rescue and Rural Fire Service personnel who were here when we arrived and who also assisted with the initial attack and with rescuing a dog from the house.”

Emergency services have remained on the scene since the fire last night to monitor hotspots and potential structural collapse as well as to investigate its cause.