DESPERATE DASH FOR THEIR LIVES
FAMILY’S ESCAPE FROM FIRE:
WHEN Lani Deacon realised her Atherton flat was burning on Sunday morning she could only think about finding her three young kids and getting out.
“I wouldn’t have come out of that house without my children, I keep telling myself I grabbed what was important and that was my kids,” the mum of three said. “My mother was there too and she reckons my voice changed, it wasn’t my normal yelling, it was coming from deep inside and all about the hurt and the pain of that moment.”
Ms Deacon, who has lived at the historic Gibson Street address for just over a year, was initially woken when three-year-old son Locky wanted permission to visit the toilet but fell back to sleep.
“I opened my eyes, I don’t know what woke me, but I could see the flames,” she said.
“My first reaction was getting to Locky, who I assumed was still in the toilet, but the flames were already at the door I needed to pass through to get to the bathroom so I was just sizing them up to jump through when I heard a little voice behind me.
“He said ‘mum, I’m here’ and that was the greatest thing in that awful moment, I can’t explain what a relief it was to know he wasn’t in the bathroom.”
Her four-year-old son Brenden was asleep in the cubby the kids had built below the table, so Ms Deacon grabbed him on the way past when she saw the teddies moving, and eight-year-old daughter Elle-Louise emerged from her bed before following her mother’s instructions.
Together they descended the external stairs where Ms Deacon said she was so disorientated she was surprised to see daylight, explaining there was so much smoke in her first-floor apartment she assumed it was still night.
She quizzed Locky about what he saw when in the bathroom and he remembered flames outside the window and needing to “jump over a little fire to get back to the lounge”.
Three days after the blaze Ms Deacon has salvaged a few small items from the ashes while searching for somewhere the family can resettle.
“I just need to find a place,” she said. “Everyone has been so lovely with donating things, or just being there to ask if we’re OK and offering support, and it helps to be assured, but right now I need to find a home so my kids and I can be home again.”