A mum and her five children will spend New Year's Eve sleeping on the floor of a friend's living room after a devastating fire ripped through their home on Boxing Day.
Claire Rimmer, 37, was woken up by her fire alarm at 4.15am on December 26, and went downstairs to find the kitchen of her Seaforth home filled with black smoke.
She said: "The house was covered in smoke. I got the kids out of bed and put them in the front bedroom, and went downstairs to see what was going on. I couldn't see any fire at the time because it was full of smoke. I came back upstairs and phoned 999."
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Claire, her three daughters aged 16, 12 and 10, and two sons aged six and two, took refuge in an upstairs bedroom while they waited for Mersyeside Fire and Rescue to arrive, and evacuated the building just as firefighters arrived five minutes later.
They were treated at the scene for smoke inhalation, and taken by ambulance to Alder Hey Children's Hospital, where the children received further check-ups.
Claire was taken to Aintree University Hospital in Fazakerley, where she remained until midnight while her children were looked after by their dad and a family friend.
Claire, who works for HMRC, said: "At the minute the kids are still a bit shook up. One is still struggling to breathe a bit, but the others are still in shock. The little one keeps asking to go home, but we can't go back at the minute."
The fire, which is believed to have broken out in the hood of the kitchen cooker, caused significant smoke damage to the kitchen and furniture, and left the whole house "stinking" of smoke.
Following the incident, Claire and her children moved in temporarily with her friend, Gemma Lander, in Bootle. The two women have now appealed for help to replace the destroyed cooker and clean up the damage so the family can finally return to their home.
Claire said: "Everything is smoke damaged. The ceiling, the kitchen is completely black, the cooker is destroyed and the kitchen is covered in ash. The whole house absolutely stinks of smoke. It's a really toxic smell. Spend 10 minutes in there and you're coughing.
"I keep thinking if the hood of the cooker hadn't fallen off, then probably the whole place would have gone up and we wouldn't have come out alive."
Gemma, 35, said: "It's been a horrible shock to them. The kids want to go home, but everything is pretty much ruined. It's right on top of Christmas, and two of the children's birthdays are coming up in January, so it couldn't have happened at a worse time.
"The baby needs a new pram, and we need some skips to get rid of the furniture. Everything soft is just destroyed. You'll never get the smell of smoke out of it."
Claire added: "It would just be a massive help to be able to put some sort of normality back into the children's lives. Even though a lot of things will have to go, like bedding and clothes, it would at least give them an actual home to live in, rather than just a floor in someone's house."
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