A family whose home was gutted by a major fire only learned of the devastating blaze when their unsettled four-year-old woke during the night. Husband and wife Lee and Nadine Jones and their two children, Nia and Sienna, woke up to clouds of smoke and a huge fire tearing through their home.
Four fire trucks arrived to deal with the flames and although no-one was hurt it has left their home in ruins and the family in shock. They had lived in their semi-detached houme in Litchard, Bridgend, for four years. Following the blaze on June 6 they have had to move out and are now living with Nadine’s mother in a smaller house with less space than they are used to.
The family had been using a small fire pit in their garden which they thought was out when they went back inside. Nadine said: “The fire was out, we had showers, and went back out to have a hot chocolate. The fire was still out then we'd gone to bed and 20 minutes later it was ablaze.”
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Nadine went to sleep in the couple’s bed upstairs while Lee fell asleep in the living room watching TV. They woke up to the sounds of their four-year-old daughter Sienna who was unsettled.
Lee went up to see to her and it was only when he went back down the stairs that he saw an orange light coming from the kitchen, which turned out to be the fire. He ran back up the stairs and shouted: “It’s catching the house – you need to all get out.”
It was then that Nia looked out of her window to see a wall of flames. “She said it was like fireworks popping up outside and said she could feel the heat in her room," mum Nadine said. After that it took around seven minutes for the emergency services to arrive. According to the family the fire service had received calls from various neighbours at the time informing them that there was a fire and had already become aware that there may be an issue having been alerted by their helicopter's heat detector when out on patrol.
Once they got there the fire had spread quickly and Nadine said that "a lot of water was used" to put the flames out completely. Now she is hoping that her children can recover swiftly from the experience.
Nia is currently on the waiting list to be checked for autism and her mum also suspects that Sienna may also be autistic. Nadine said: “Being autistic obviously means that you’re more sensitive to your surroundings. And what’s worrying is that we are still in the early stages of dealing with this as it’s been a matter of weeks so I’m just trying to stay as strong as I can for them really.
"Any noises or smells that remind them of it now I think puts them on edge. Nia was shaking that day and both off them were actually sick afterwards. I'm not doing too good – I'm not sleeping well at all and I'm getting flashbacks. The smell of fire now as well freaks me out. That was our thing to do at the summer, every summer, but I can't stand that now."
The family has been told it could take a year to move back in with no-one allowed to enter at the moment. And they are still waiting to find out how they can get replacements for all of their belongings.
Nadine said: "You can't live in any room in the house as it's now classed as structurally unsafe. Now it's like looking at someone else's life. I had to go back the other day to collect some mail because it's still got a front door but it was heartbreaking.
"I can't think of anything worse now unless something happened to a member of the family. Me and my husband have had 20 years together so we've lost things that we've just kept from a long time ago, like things in the attic, and all the baby stuff which is so sad because it's just everything.
"We love the area and didn't want to move away from it so hopefully our insurance should be able to pay for us to live in a house temporarily there again. It's comforting being away from where the fire was but there's six of us altogether in my mum's two-bed house so it's just not working. And it's an hour away to get my girls to and from school which I'm doing twice a week and it's very hard." A GoFundMe page has been set up to support them in replacing some possessions.
