Fire leaves family of four homeless
"That's what you've got after 30 years of marriage – only the clothes on your back." Robin Pearce
The smell of smoke still lingers at the site of a devastating fire in Marlborough that last week engulfed a family home leaving a charred shell in its wake.
‘‘It’s the kids that are hurting,’’ Robin Pearce says. ‘‘It’s all they’ve ever known.’’
Last Wednesday started off like a normal day. Robin and his wife, Lisa, were grading possum skins and fur for their family business.
The couple went next door from the grading shed back to the house, in the small settlement of Tuamarina, halfway between Picton and Blenheim.
They drove into Blenheim to run some errands. On the way they saw a fire engine, its lights flashing, speeding in the opposite direction.
But it wasn’t until they got the call from police that they learned its destination – the house they had bought 15 years ago.
What they saw when they arrived back was gutting, Robin Pearce says.
Flames were licking out the windows of the home where he and Lisa had raised their two children, Holly, 14, and Hugh, 12, as firefighters battled the blaze.
‘‘It was horrible, just gutting. I can’t describe the feeling, even now I feel it, every time we come home,’’ he says.
Standing on the lawn, looking up at the plywood boards covering the windows and doors of the charred house, he describes the sense of loss.
‘‘You stand there and look at your feet, and that’s what you’ve got after 30 years of marriage – only the clothes on your back,’’ he says.
Everything the family owned was inside the house, but the things Lisa Pearce says she will miss the most (and hopes are still recoverable) are their photo albums.
They were stored in a cabinet in the kitchen, which wasn’t burnt as badly as the surrounding rooms, so she asked one of the firemen to see what he could find.
‘‘He came out with a chargrilled thing, and said, ‘this is the worst one’, so I still don’t know,’’ she says.
‘‘Photos are your most important possessions, you can go buy a couch or a chair anywhere, but you can’t get your memories back.’’
When the firefighters arrived, Lisa Pearce says a ute was still in the driveway, so they went in, assuming someone might still be inside the house. ‘‘They were just amazing. ‘‘We’re very grateful for what they did. They put their lives on the line,’’ her husband says.
The couple say they want to thank all the emergency responders and the people who have helped them since, offering food, clothes and shelter.
Since last Wednesday, the family have been staying with friends and family, waiting until the investigation into the cause of the fire is concluded, and dealing with insurance.
The house will have to be pulled down, but neither of them know how long that might take and how long it might be before they can build again.
‘‘We’re kind of in limbo,’’ Robin Pearce says.
In the crawl space in the foundations of the house is an inscription on one of the beams that says when it was built – 1907.
Since then it has survived other tragedies such as the 1983 Tuamarina flood, which left water marks in the kitchen and the lounge the family renovated.
Pointing to the plyboard covers, maybe two or three metres off the ground, Lisa Pearce gestures to where the water came up to, where they found the stains inside.
Its sense of history and character was why they bought the house in the first place, to do up and restore to its prime.