Early morning on Friday 20th March our house caught fire. It may have been an electrical fire in our dining room but not confirmed. My partner Nathan & eldest son Ethan had already left for work. My teenage son Tyler was asleep & I was upstairs when I heard the fire alarm going off. I immediately went to investigate to find flames had already taken hold & there was nothing I could do. I ran upstairs to wake my son & opened our bedroom windows so our cat could out onto the conservatory roof as he had hidden under the bed & wouldn’t come out. When outside the adrenaline was already rushing through me & my hands were shaking making it hard to dial 999. The fire crews arrived about 10 minutes later, by then smoke was billowing out of the ground floor windows. The fire crews were amazing, so many of them all putting their lives at risk to get it under control. Unfortunately everything is gone either burnt, wet or smoke damaged. They had to take some roof tiles off to get water in as the conservatory flames had got into the eaves igniting the loft insulation.

Some good news is our cat survived, he got himself out & I found him hiding in some bushes. He’s burnt his paws & singed his whiskers but I got him checked over by a vet, amazingly no damage to his lungs from smoke inhalation.

So what happens now? We need a small amount of funds to buy basic essentials whilst we wait for the insurance company to handle our claim. We are not sure yet if they will payout. We’re preparing ourselves for this being a long process. An amazing friend of ours sorted an air BnB for 10 days so we didn’t have to think about where to stay.

Any money raised will help with the following:

insurance excess £450

Vet bills - £117 plus a follow up appt

clothes & shoes for 3 adults & 1 teenager

school uniform - trousers, shirts, blazer, tie, PE kit, shoes, bag, stationery

electrical items - phone chargers & plugs, hairdryer

household items - pillows & towels

we have insurance that I hope will cover the big stuff & contents, just a little to take the pressure off our credit cards whilst we wait for the process to complete, who knows when that will be.

Thank you from the bottom of our hearts to everyone that supported us when it was happening and to all of you who have reached out to wish us well. We’re a little broken but we’re together and we’re safe, we will rebuild xx