A FAMILY has been “devastated” after all their belongings went up in smoke during a major fire in West Ealing.
Sue King and her daughter Katherine, 21, stood and watched helpless as the blaze consumed their home in Chapel Road last Wednesday afternoon.
Mrs King said her daughter was in the property around the time the blaze started but got out when a neighbour raised the alarm.
She said: “I was on the bus travelling home and my phone was on silent. I got it out to check if there’d been any calls and I saw that I’d missed her call.”
The two made contact and Mrs King was let through the cordon to join her daughter on Chapel Road with their two dogs, watching as fire crews attempted to tackle the fire.
“It was horrendous. I was praying that people were okay and all we could do was look on in grief.”
Worse still, Mrs King said she could not afford insurance for the contents of her flat, which means that everything she owned at the site has now been lost forever.
“We’re just devastated. I’m staying with my brother in Shepherd’s Bush while we wait to be re-housed but I just don’t know what we’re going to do.”
But there was a joyful moment when Mrs King and her daughter were allowed back into the property on Saturday to find their two cats, Phelix and Harvey, both alive in the wreckage.
She said: “We found one cat underneath a mattress and another hiding in the back cupboard. They were both very shaken and bedraggled but they were alive, which was incredible. They’d been there for four days. It was a very tearful moment, because I thought we’d just go in there and find two dead cats.”
Both pets are at an animal hospital in Hemel Hempstead where they are said to be gradually recovering. Mrs King, who works as a teaching assistant at Twyford High School, said the incident has badly affected her and she has had trouble sleeping properly.
Along with her daughter, they had both lived in Chapel Street for two years and are waiting to be re-housed by housing agency Catalyst, which they were renting the property from.
A spokesman for Catalyst said it has provided a ‘disturbance allowance’ to all tenants affected by the blaze to cover their basic living costs while focussing on finding new permanent accommodation for them.
The agency met with all the tenants from the three flats affected and hopes to be able to rebuild the property in Chapel Road. Meanwhile, the cause of the blaze is still being investigated.
