Terrible house fire

[wherethewildthingis]

Posting for any experience people have and reassurance it will be OK. We had a terrible house fire yesterday evening. We were at home and could smell smoke/plastic burning. While we were looking for the source, the fuse box by our front door suddenly burst into flames. We were all safely out of the house immediately but in the five minutes it took the fire brigade to arrive, the damage is terrible. The entire ground floor is gutted and the first floor is very bad. We live in a town house and some things on the top floor might be salvageable but everything is covered in soot and filthy.

We are at my mums, we don't even have shoes other than what my neighbours lent us . We are insured but it will be months if not a year before we can go home.

I am so grateful we are all OK but just feel devastated. We have lost everything.

Can anyone reassure me that we will be OK?

We were out of our house for about 6 months. All redecorated, soft furnishings replaced. We just never felt quite settled there after that. We moved 4 years later. No specifically because of the fire, we found a house that worked better for us. I’m glad we did move back in, helped to ‘exorcise the demon’ as it were but I’m also happy we moved on. Our new home has a different feel.

Gosh! I feel inspired to take photos of everything and email it all to myself and check my insurance. The thought of losing a pet (or person) is so harrowing, I'm very sorry for you all.

Me too. Our house insurance is due for renewal at the start of July. I will definitely be keeping this thread in mind when renewing.

I'm so sorry to hear about your fire OP.

My friend had a house fire many years ago, and everything turned out fine. In fact she has said it was one of the best things which could have happened, as the house needed renovating and they would have taken several years to have afforded to get it done. They ended up with the whole inside of the house being gutted and remodelled, with everything being replaced.

I hope it all goes well for you.

I'm so sorry to hear about your fire @CatSophie, and especially for the loss of your pet.

My friend lost a lot when her loo overflowed for 2 weeks, her family were on holiday. Detached house so no seepage to neighbours. They were in a rented house paid for by insurers for about 8 months. She was ok, just a bit of a wobble but all fine.

Take care

I'm pleased if I can offer any kind of comfort to people enduring this. We are OK, we did recover and we always felt lucky as none of us were hurt. If the fire had started at night we would likely all have died.

Reading my first post on this thread takes me back to the truly raw awfulness of the shock and the pain and reminds me how far we have come. Even on that awful night there was humour - the man who came to board up the house arrived at 3am and said to my husband (stood outside his burnt out house in the rain, with borrowed shoes on) "oh mate you won't believe the day I've had"! We still have a chuckle at that.

To anyone who does experience this all I can say is take every day as it comes, be kind to yourself and it will get better.

Everyone else- please get your electrics checked and remember to shut all your internal doors, all the time !

This is horrible, mine was the tumble dryer too. I was stood next to it and it set alight.it was about 10pm and my daughters bedroom qas connected to the wall where the dryer was so i thank god I was awake. It went up in minutes there was nothing we could even do apart from get out. So sorry to hear your son was there and shaken up i hope he's recovered from that x

We will have to move again in a few years anyway as I have another baby now but i totally agree I feel we need to go back to close the book on what happened, I need to go back for my own mental health. Thankyou so much for replying to me and I apologise if its brought up any old trauma for any of you. It's been so comforting speaking to people it's also happened to you feel so alone when things like this Happens as not many can relate x

My tumble dryer nearly went up, i smelled something funny and heaved it into the garden just before it went up.

This happened to us when I was a teenager. The house was sorted surprisingly quickly and all of the neighbours rallied round to help as much as they could.

Sending you lots of love, it is a dreadful thing to go though.

Sorry to hear that. One of our friendship group in Hampshire had a fire while they were on holiday. Turned out to be the dishwasher. They were all ok but of course it was devastating at the time but the cat turned up the next day. Crispy whiskers but fine! She later texted us when she arrived back from the holiday we were on this year to say the electrics had failed....! Which was the day she was hosting a party! I asked her if any of the party food was in the freezer but apparently all was ok!