WE WATCHED HOUSE BURN FROM GARDEN
Family fear home can’t be salvaged after blaze
A FAMILY were forced to watch in horror from their garden after a house fire left them with nothing but the clothes on their backs.
Jim, 54, and Nicola Jarvis, 45, were at home on Mary Street in Laurieston, Falkirk, on Saturday with three of their children – Paul, 20, Robbie, 17, Chloe 14 – when the fire alarm went off at around 7pm.
Within seconds, they were forced to abandon the property and stood outside as their home burned to the ground.
Jim and Nicola had been out for a trip to Stirling during the day, taking their son Robbie to sit his driving theory test and had not long returned when the blaze broke out.
Jim said: “I heard the fire alarm and at first thought it was a typical false alarm but then I smelled smoke and ran into the kitchen.
“Nicola started screaming that it was upstairs so I followed the smoke and noticed it was coming from our bedroom.
“We had renovated the place about 20 years ago and had an en-suite bathroom fitted with a wee sauna attached and it seemed to be coming from there.
“When I opened the door to the sauna, smoke and heat just hit me like a brick wall and started to engulf the full house.
I shouted for everyone to get out and we all ran outside in our socks.”
The Scottish Fire and Rescue Service sent out nine appliances and battled the blaze through the night.
Jim said: “We were standing there utterly devastated. It is a lifetime worth of memories and possessions just gone like that.
”We have a structural engineer coming tomorrow to tell us whether the house will need to be demolished but we aren’t holding out much hope.”