Kentish Gazette Canterbury & District
‘People were screaming and children were crying’
A couple whose home is likely to be demolished after the devastating fire say they feel lucky despite losing “practically everything”.
For Sarah Horton, 28, and Dan Berry, 33, the Tannery flat they shared was their first home together.
But this week they face the prospect of being homeless after learning there is an 80% chance it will have to be torn down.
Sarah had lived there for more than five years and bought the flat with Dan last year in a shared-ownership scheme with Town and Country Housing.
Speaking on Monday, she said: “It was our first foot on the property ladder. Just 48 hours ago, this was a really desirable place to live, in the centre of Canterbury, parking, two bedrooms, a good investment for us as a first property, but now no one is going to want to live here.”
Sarah was out when the fire started but, in a twist of fate that probably saved the life of their cat, Lupo, Dan returned home early from a football tournament after his pal twisted an ankle.
“I had all the windows open and I could smell smoke,” he said. “I thought ‘Is someone having a barbecue? In The Tannery?’.
“I shut the windows because there was a lot of smoke coming in. I saw a couple of fire engines and saw the roof was on fire down the far end and spreading pretty quickly.”
Dan, a substance misuse worker for Addaction, added: “I went outside and they had cordoned the road off. I said ‘Am I safe here?’. They said ‘You’re all right at the moment, get a bag just in case’. I went upstairs and got the cat, who’s a nightmare to get hold of, ready to go.
“I could see the firefighters were very quickly moving down the street towards us. It felt like it happened really, really quickly.
“Then one of the firemen started banging on the door, saying ‘You need to get out’.
“When I was getting the cat, I felt a vibration and a bang and people were screaming outside and children were crying. They’d been evacuated and were watching their homes burn.”
By Saturday evening, the pair, who are staying with friends, hoped their two-bed first floor flat had avoided the worst.
Sarah, who works in the partnership development office at the University of Kent, said: “We went to bed knowing it had hit our building, and that’s all we knew.”
But on Sunday they discovered flames had penetrated the roof above. “I burst into tears when I saw it,” said Sarah.
“The whole roof was burned. I saw that they were pouring water on to our flat. At that point we knew there was going to be quite a lot of damage.”
In fact, firefighters had smashed a hole in their lounge wall to get to the adjacent flat to fight the fire.
They were allowed to collect belongings on Monday morning but were warned to stick to what they needed, rather than what they wanted, and to come back for the rest. But an hour later at Westgate Hall, by chance, Sarah found the future of their home was in serious doubt.
“Town and Country staff had a briefing and when they came back, one of the guys sat opposite me with big sheets of paper with people’s names and numbers on it.
“Next to some of them, he had written ‘Gone’. I noticed there was ours, the flat above and to the left. He said they were being demolished. In red it said ‘80 per cent chance of being demolished’. I said ‘When did that happen? I was there an hour ago’.”
With help from Sarah’s dad, Ray, they frantically arranged to collect as many possessions as possible.
“We got most of our clothes but left the furniture. Everything was soaking.”
The pair have continued to stay with friends and have been told they can search for somewhere else to live of an equivalent size, with insurance due to cover the cost. They also said they were grateful to strangers who responded to a plea for replacement items for their cat.
Reflecting on what happened, Sarah knows it could have been worse.
“We are among the lucky ones because we have had the opportunity to go in and salvage what we could, even if they do demolish it.
“It’s so heartbreaking to go there. You can see bits of people’s wallpaper in the rubble. It’s their lives. So compared with them we are lucky.
“We’ve lost practically everything and yet we are still lucky.”
‘I’ve lost everything. All the children’s clothes and toys are gone. We’ve pretty much been left with what we were wearing’
- Colette Osborne, pictured above with daughter Star