The Press and Journal (Aberdeen and Aberdeenshire)
Family’s lives go ‘up in smoke’
Blaze: Stunned mum tells how fire in flat quickly consumed prized possessions
A mother who escaped from her burning flat with her 11-year-old daughter and their puppy has told how their lives “have gone up in smoke”.
Louise Spiers, aged 41, and daughter Olivia were getting ready to settle down for a cosy girls’ night in when a blaze was started by a tea light candle yesterday evening in Tay Road, Mastrick.
A frantic Olivia raised the alarm and rescued 16-week old puppy Hope as flames grew larger and smoke billowed throughout the flat and outside, while Miss Spiers tried to put out the fire using basins of water. But the fire was too strong, so she had to stand aside as a lifetime of precious memories were destroyed in a matter of minutes.
Mobile phones, iPads and DVDs were melted in the blaze, as well as thousands of pounds worth of equipment and supplies for Miss Spiers’ bespoke jewellery business.
But she is more upset about losing sentimental items which were stored in her room. Still covered in black dust from the fire, she said: “Me and my girl decided we’d have a cosy DVD night. She’d not been feeling very well.
“I lit a couple of tea lights and put them on a TV unit. I don’t know what happened. All I can think it the dog maybe knocked them off, thinking it was food. I’d barely turned my back.”
Fighting back the tears, she added: “Olivia came in to me shouting ‘there’s a fire, there’s a fire!’ I didn’t think she was serious, I said ‘we’re fine here’. But when I went in the bedroom everything was up in flames.
“I just told Olivia to get out of the house. She was able to rescue the dog, thank God. I grabbed a basin and filled it with water to try and put it out but, by the time I’d filled it up again, the fire was too strong.
“Everything sentimental was in my bedroom. I had the girls’ tickets from hospital when they were born, their first clothes and their first pictures. It was all documented away.
“How do you put it into words? Our lives have gone up in smoke.”
Fire crews could be seen last night clearing charred belongings through the second-floor flat’s bedroom window.
A fire service spokewoman said: “We were called to a flat fire on Tay Road at 6.50pm.”
“I just told Olivia to get out of the house. She was able to rescue the dog”