Family Loses All To Flames
Newcastle Herald
Monday December 8, 2003
A TERRIGAL mother was searching for emergency accommodation yesterday after losing everything in a house fire.
Annette Brooks required oxygen treatment after escaping from the Charlotte Close house with her three children at 9.30am on Saturday as flames raced through the rented home.
Investigators ruled out last night a powerboard linked to a television set, video recorder, DVD and possibly Christmas lights as the cause of the fire.
Neighbours ran from up to 500metres away as thick black smoke billowed from the house at the end of a quiet street where the family has lived for 18 months.
As she picked through the home's charred remains yesterday, Mrs Brooks said she did not notice the choking smoke that poured from the lounge room when she ran towards the fire with a bucket of water.
``All I saw was the glow of the fire but when I threw the water on it this black wall of smoke just came at me and that's when I knew we had to get out," she said.
``I yelled `Fire' and got the kids out and just kept yelling `Fire, call the fire brigade' and then we ran up the embankment to the road."
Mrs Brooks and her children, Darren, 15, Rebecca, 12, and Luke, 5, were in bed in the downstairs part of the house on Saturday morning when Luke went upstairs to watch television.
``He came running back down to me and said, `Mum, there's a fire,"' Mrs Brooks said.
``I ran upstairs and I think I must have almost been in shock straight away, because I really didn't see the smoke, but it must have been there, because the fire was well alight by the time I got to it."
A next-door neighbour rang 000 when she
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Family loses all in house fire
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saw smoke pouring from the roof.
``People were there so quickly," Mrs Brooks said yesterday.
``There were people everywhere.
``It's been quite overwhelming really, the number of people who brought clothes and bedding around and offered support."
Our Lady Star of the Sea Church at Terrigal, where Mrs Brooks is a parishioner, will hold a fund-raiser for the family. Mrs Brooks said she had house contents insurance.
``The fire brigade people said often people who rent don't have contents insurance so I was lucky that way but I've lost some things which were very special to me," she said. They included personal items of two relatives who died in separate accidents in the past five years.
© 2003 Newcastle Herald
