SMOKE SAVED

Former Trades Hall

A SMOKE detector has saved the life of a prominent Geelong unionist and his family.

Former Geelong Trades Hall secretary Tim Gooden said he was woken on Friday morning by the smoke alarm outside his bedroom, as a fire ripped through his Manifold Heights home.

“At 5.15am the smoke detector woke me up — but I normally get up at 5.30am so I thought it was my phone alarm and I was trying to turn it off,” Mr Gooden said.

“Then I realised what it was, and I opened the kitchen door and the heat and the smoke was already unbearable so I shut the kitchen door and yelled at everyone — (my wife) Sue and the two dogs — to get out.

“I called triple-0 and got the garden hose to try and put it out, but the best I could do was try to keep it away from the kitchen door, and then eventually the heat pushed me back to the front door and all I could do was hose the kitchen door, and by then the fire brigade came.”

Mr Gooden praised the speed of the West Geelong CFA brigade’s response, who he said arrived less than six minutes after his earlymorning call.

The fire — which Mr Gooden said was likely started by an electrical fault — was a timely reminder for the region’s homeowners and renters to check their smoke detectors were in working order.

“Had we not had smoke alarms — the fire had been going for ages, the fireys thought — the smoke may have got us,” he said.

Mr Gooden said he and his wife were trying to be philosophical about the fire, escaping unscathed, only losing “stuff” and being covered by insurance — but said losing their passports the day of a flight to Italy was particularly annoying.

“The night before we’d packed all our clothes into our new suitcases because we were going to Europe on the Friday night for a holiday, and of course all the passports and documents were in that,” he said.

“I’m lucky I’ve still got my wallet, so all my IDs and that, but Sue’s got nothing — we’ve been scrounging around looking for burnt bits of rates notices with her name on it or something to prove she exists and lived here and how old she is so we can take that to the passport people and see if we can get urgent passports to maybe still go away.”

For more information on smoke alarms, visit cfa.vic.gov.au