Harper Davis’s family has two cats, named Marley and Ali, and her favourite school subjects are art, writing and spelling.

She’s involved in dance, kapa haka, the choir, plays hockey and netball, and when she grows up she wants to be a police officer or firefighter.

Which is fitting, given the nine-year-old, who’s in year 5 at St Mark’s Catholic School in Pakuranga, is being hailed as a hero for being the first person to alert staff at the nearby McDonald’s fast-food restaurant on May 5 that their building was on fire.

The blaze broke out at the busy restaurant on Pakuranga Road just before 3pm.

A teacher had walked Harper to the area so she could be collected by her mother.

Harper had just entered the playground inside the restaurant when she saw smoke “everywhere”.

“I couldn’t really see clearly because it was like fog,” the brave schoolgirl says.

“It was really hard for me to breathe and to see.

“I put my bags down and went to check if the rubbish bin was on fire so I could tell a staff member.

“Then, when I carefully climbed over one of the slides to check, I didn’t see the rubbish bin on fire.

“I saw part of the playground on fire, so I got down and crawled in this small toddler bit, then turned right, and there’s a little hut, and in the middle of these two walls there was the fire.”

Harper didn’t hesitate to inform the restaurant’s staff of the emergency.

“They alerted other managers to quickly call the fire department,” she says.

“My mum arrived and by the time she got there the whole playground was on fire, so it spread very quickly.

“Then she told me to get in the car because there’s a gas station right next to the fire.

“Luckily the fire department is one minute away. Then they were putting out the fire and they stayed the night just to make sure nothing else started.”

She and her mum returned to the scene the next morning before school.

“I went over to tell a detective what happened,” Harper says.

“When I got there he started asking me questions like what colour the smoke was.

“I told him it was a light grey, like fog, and he let me put on a fire department hat.”

Since the incident she’s received praise for her maturity in a stressful situation and her quick-thinking response.

“They’ve been like, ‘you’ve been such a great hero, you’re so heroic!” she says.

“One of my close friends, she said, ‘you’re a celebrity!’.

“It was very interesting. My dad was like, ‘did you know that you’d be famous like this?’ and I was like ‘no!’.

Harper’s teacher, Jenny McKenzie, says she spotted smoke billowing from the McDonald’s.

“I went to the corner, saw what was on fire, came back and said to the teacher who’d taken Harper down there, ‘you took Harper down, was she going to McDonald’s today?’.

“She said ‘yes’. I said, ‘Sarah, it’s on fire!’.

“She was absolutely astounded because five minutes before, when she walked Harper down, there was no sign of any smoke or anything.

“Then Sarah and I straight away took off, but by that time the police were at the corner and we couldn’t go any closer.

“I raced back to school to get somebody to ring her mum to see if she’s out of there.

“We were so relieved, because as staff we were incredibly worried knowing she’d gone there.”

McKenzie says several teachers have asked if Harper can talk to their class about the experience.

“Our own class, the one Harper is in, probably for the first 40 minutes of the day they fired questions at her.

“Then one of the other year 5-6 classes decided they’d write a news-style report, so they asked could she go over and they interview her.

“And then the other teacher who’d walked her down there asked could she go to her class, and other classes have asked her to go and talk to them as well.”

St Mark’s Catholic School principal Tracey Kopua sums up how the school feels about the way Harper handled the incident when she says: “We are very proud of Harper.

“She showed great maturity by acting so decisively when she spotted danger.

“Goodness knows what could have happened if she hadn’t been there at that moment in time.”

Police say investigations into the cause of the fire at McDonald’s Pakuranga are ongoing and it’s being treated as a suspected arson.