A Nottinghamshire family has lost “everything” after an electrical fire broke out in their home. Mum-of-four, Amanda Harrison, had been in her kitchen at 2:30 pm on August 2nd when her two dogs started barking in their home on Parkes Close, Coddington, near Newark.
The 36-year-old said: “I thought someone must be at the front door so I went to look and there wasn’t, but there was a noise coming from the little meter box.” She said it “started popping and crackling” and as she went to turn the electricity off it started to smoke.
Amanda said: “It happened so fast, it just started to smoke black and I thought I needed to get the kids out. I was shouting ‘everyone gets out, fire, fire’ as loud as I could.”
Her 11-year-old son had been upstairs on his PlayStation and her youngest son, aged three, was downstairs as she was about to dress him to go shopping. Her daughter, 12, had been at a sleepover and was not home yet, and her eldest son, 14, was on a trip to London.
The trio ran out of the house as fast as they could. Amanda said: “As we were going out of the door it burst into flames.” She rang 999 and opened the back door to let the dogs out and moved the car off the drive so the fire engines could get to the council property.
Luckily as she had been about to go out, she had her keys in her bag ready. She says the fire service arrived in around 10 minutes, during which time she “could the smoke going up the stairs and black smoke coming out the window.”
Amanda added: “The neighbours came over as they heard me shout ‘get out’ to the kids, and I did shout loud, I think the whole street heard me.” She says the community rallied around them and helped them with shoes and clothing as her youngest wasn’t fully dressed and they all left barefoot.
When the firefighters arrived Amanda advised them on where the fire started and she overheard one firefighter later saying it was 301°C in the house. She said: “They were trying to put it out and the fire kept coming back, so it did take quite a while to get it out.”
She stated: “At least everyone is alive. If this had happened at nighttime, I don’t think we would have all made it out, because it was so fast and it took hold so fast.”
Once the fire was safely extinguished, Amanda said: “After it all, I peeked my head inside and it was just gone, everything is gone. The walls were melted, all the plaster had come off the wall, our fire fixture was all melted on the floor, our kitchen was black, everything was black, the ceilings and everything was just smoke damaged.
“Everything was on the floor, the ceilings were on the floor because it melted the ceilings, and everything upstairs was black.” Unfortunately, the family did not have contents insurance which means they can’t make a claim.
She continued: “We had literally just decorated the day before and got new beds for the kids and they all had brand-new wardrobes. They also had new clothes two weeks before as we went on holiday and it was that time of year when I got them new clothes.”
Amanda and her husband, John, 32, were supervised whilst in the home to see if they could salvage anything, but nothing could be saved. The mum explained: “Everything is destroyed, every possession, our whole lives. It takes you so long to build everything up and then it’s just gone.
“I was a foster child and everything I owned and built up I did without any help, and you think of all that effort when you are 18 and you move out for the first time and start collecting things for your home and it’s all gone. Everything you build up over the years just disappears.”
The house was “condemned” which means it is not livable and is “very dangerous” to be in. The family were offered a hotel by the council to stay in, but as they have two dogs they decided to stay with their family over the weekend and hope to figure things out on Monday.
Amanda added: “I still at this moment don’t know the plan, I just know we can’t go in the house, and it’s not a three-week job it will be months. Can you imagine if it happened the week before if we were on holiday, I’m lucky that I was at home as I was about to go out shopping.”
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She explained that she and her family are so grateful to everyone who has offered them support, and they have created a GoFundMe page to raise money for new furniture and other items once they have somewhere to go. Amanda stated “It’s hard because we can’t accept furniture as we can’t store it here” but they hope to purchase some second-hand items when they can.
