FACES OF FIRE

These everyday Kiwis have either faced the trauma of fire themselves or lost loved ones in a blaze and had to live with the heartbreaking consequences. They share their stories in the hope that you will make a plan to escape your home quickly and calmly in the event of a fire. Make your plan today @ escapemyhouse.co.nz

THOSE WHO LOST LOVED ONES SUSAN WOODS

They found Angela Dain’s body in the kitchen, under the fridge door which had blown off when the intense fire made the fridge explode. Six-yearold Baelee Dain was found at her bedroom door in their Christchurch house in July 2009, trapped by the lack of an escape route. Angela’s sister Susan Woods still mourns the tragic loss and says Angela’s rented bungalow had been renovated so that the big front door entrance was blocked off; Angela and Baelee had to enter and leave the house by the back door. The only way out for Baelee was the big sash windows – too big for a six-year- old; she was overcome by smoke. “It’s made me paranoid about escape routes,” says Susan. “My kids have had it drummed into them. Even if they stay at a friend’s house, they have to map out a way out of the building and know how to get out the windows. Fire can kill you so quickly, you need escape routes and you need alarms.”

MALCOLM FROST

Firefighter Malcolm Frost is a 59-year- old Station Officer at Bunnythorpe, close to the home of dad Ian (an active, alert 84-year- old) in Foxton. At about 5.30am on a Sunday morning in May 2017, a fire began in Ian’s chimney flue – caused by radiated heat that built up in a nail in the flue (even though a fire was not burning at the time). It burst out, engulfing the house in flames. “Dad was in the downstairs toilet,” says Malcolm. “He’s either heard the fire or the smoke alarms went off – so he opened the door. The house was going up really quickly; opening the door just fuelled it.” Ian made it to the back door, unbolting it, but the flames overtook him, burning him to death. Malcolm says, in the right conditions, a fire doubles in intensity every nine seconds: “People must go to their local station and pick up a kit,” says Malcolm. “They have to draw a diagram of the house and make sure every member knows how to get out and where to assemble. In a fire, get down, get low, get out.”

DAVE WILLS

Dave Wills was so rocked by his grandmother’s death in a house fire that he became a volunteer firefighter. It also gave him an unshakeable belief in the theory of Oh Yes, It Certainly Can Happen To You and the correct use and placement of smoke alarms. His nana, Marie Wills, was in her 80s and in bed asleep when fire erupted in her home at Waikanae Beach in August 1999. Marie had just the one, lonely smoke alarm; no one knows whether it triggered or Marie was woken by the sound of the kitchen windows blowing out with the flames. “She stood up into the smoke – few people burn to death in fires; it’s the smoke that gets you,” says Dave. “She made for the bedroom door but then turned back, picked up the bedside phone and tried to dial out, before collapsing against the bed, where the firefighters found her. It’s absolutely critical to invest in long-life photo- electric smoke alarms and to have the right number in the right locations – generally speaking, in every sleeping area, the living room, hallways and outside the kitchen.”

THOSE WHO ESCAPED

SAM MOOHAN

“It’s so lucky the friend staying with us came home from night shift, saw the glow coming from the garage and woke us.” Sam, now 29, husband Joe and their twin baby girls fled their Oratia home late at night after an electrical fault started a fire in the garage, next to Sam and Joe’s bedroom. “There was no smoke, no banging, nothing to warn us and the fire was still small when I ran past with the babies. We were so lucky she came home when she did.” The garage burned so hot, things like paint tins began to explode. The family lost their cars, the house and it even spread to the next door house which lost a bedroom and a bathroom to the flames. “We now have smoke alarms in every room,” Sam says of their new abode in Karekare. “Everywhere we go, we check them – even in hotels – and we are really aware of how to get out now.”

LIZ PENNING TON

“It is engrained in my memory like it was yesterday. I thought the strange noise might be a possum on the roof. I walked down the hall and a jet of flame shot out of the wall and then disappeared.

Then the smoke started to pump in.” Liz Pennington, now chief executive of Rural Women New Zealand, was walking down her hallway in 1999 to check on her sleeping kids, then six and nine, and had no idea fire was burning in the wall cavity. Escape from their Hastings house was thanks, she says, to fire safety education. The children’s school had done an exhaustive fire safety programme; the family had practised their escape route. When the fire came, the kids were startled but knew what to do. Now, with kids of their own, they have kept the focus on escape plans.

TONI BA IN BRIDGE

In March last year, the family’s two-storey house in Levin caught fire after dodgy wiring ignited dust gathered in a disused extractor fan. “I don’t know what it was that woke me; I don’t think I will ever have an answer other than mother’s instinct,” she says. She screamed in alarm on seeing the fan had set the roof on fire – and the house’s working smoke alarms were negated as the smoke spilled outside, not inside. “I could have lost my kids that night,” she says; her 12- and 14-year- old sons were sleeping upstairs while her partner and 3-year- old slept downstairs. Three things stemmed from this: their new home has 10 smoke detectors, one in every room; she will never again live in a two-storey house without a fire escape – and Toni is in training to become a volunteer fire fighter so she can help others and spread the fire safety gospel.

JAYNE McCULLUM

When Jayne McCullum was 14, she and her five-year-old sister had a lucky escape. It was 1972, Jayne was babysitting while her parents were at the local squash club. Jayne was woken by a banging and pounding. “The lady from four doors down was yelling at me to get out. She’d seen smoke from our place while she was putting out the milk bottles.” Jayne grabbed her sister and both rushed outside in their nightwear. Three fire appliances arrived followed closely by their brother and their “devastated” parents. “If that neighbour hadn’t been putting out her milk bottles, who knows what would have happened. The house had no smoke alarms. Jayne, now in her 60s and who can remember the life-changing experience with absolute clarity, says they were not widely used in New Zealand in the 1970s but adds: “They are vital, an absolute must.”