Kentish Express Ashford & District
Neighbours face stress of damage
Smoke began filling up in the kitchen where Martyn Evans was washing up as fire took hold at a neighbour’s house in Golden Square.
It was to be the start of a long night for Mr Evans, a police forensic photographer, during which his partner and child left their three-storey home just a few doors down from number 49, the house virtually destroyed by the fierce blaze.
Mr Evans, 59, said: “The smoke was coming through the shared service pipes and into my house and I could hear smoke alarms going off in the distance.
“I went outside to investigate and saw that the noise was coming from number 49. I approached the windows and felt they were very hot.
“I couldn’t see inside as the windows were black but I could hear the sound of fire crackling. A young lad standing outside with me went up to the front door and said it was ‘red hot’.”
Mr Evans dialled 999 and says it was around 20 minutes before fire engines began to arrive. Crews were at the scene from 7.20pm until just before 2am on Thursday.
Fire was spreading into the roof spaces of the adjoining properties, numbers.47 and 45, but firefighters could only easily gain access to the upper areas via Mr Evans’s upstairs bedroom.
They put their hose through his upstairs front window and went through the loft hatch directly above his bedroom where they directed a tor- rent of water through the roof spaces.
“Effectively they used our home as a fire wall,” said Mr Evans. “If they hadn’t stopped it at my house (number 43) it could have spread to number 39 before there is a break in the terrace.”
The ceiling of the couple’s bedroom is awash with damp spots and water dripped through to the bedroom below. A builder has informed Mr Evans that the ceiling will have to be taken down and that the roof rafters are saturated.
The smell of smoke is still in the air and he says the family has faced a week-long wait for a visit from his insurers.
With the bedroom uninhabitable, the couple have had to sleep on an air bed downstairs.
“My neighbours who were affected by the fire were immediately evacuated by their insurers who came the next day,” said Mr Evans, who says the wait for a visit has been too long. “We can’t stay here when the ceilings come down and are having to live in a stressful situation.”