Flames reached up the house’s gutters according to Liz Cunningham
A mum says she was lucky her kids “weren’t asleep” after a fire ripped through their garden. Liz Cunningham, 33, told the ECHO how her children came running outside screaming “fire,” alerting her to the blaze that engulfed their back garden.
The mum-of-three, from Birkenhead, was at home with her children, aged two, seven and 10, when a firework landed in the back garden and set fire to the decking. She claims her children are too scared to “sleep” after the incident, which she says has left her with £500 worth of damage.
Liz said: “I was outside the front of my house doing up our caravan ready to take the kids away. We were actually meant to be away camping for my daughter’s birthday at the time but we had postponed it to get the jobs finished on the caravan.
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“My two eldest kids had decided they wanted to make toast, it was about 10.30pm that they snuck downstairs to make some. They came running outside screaming ‘fire fire fire.’ I panicked and bolted into the house. It looked like the whole back garden was on fire, the flames were the height of my guttering.“
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Liz immediately called the fire service and started putting the fire out with her garden hosepipe. She added: “When they [the fire service] got here they were scanning it [the fire] with their heat gun, they said it was still at risk of going back up in flames. The flames had gone as high as my guttering, it burnt my decking and melted my plant pots.
“It was lucky my children hadn’t gone to bed because I don’t think I would have been alerted of it until the fire had taken total hold of my garden and house. When the fire service had put the rest of the fire out they found multiple firework wrappers in my garden. When the firework landed in my garden it landed on a storage box, which was full of charcoal for my BBQ, that’s what set alight.”
The mums says her kids were really “shaken up“ by what happened. She said: “They wouldn’t go to bed for three nights after. They were scared, my eldest still worries about it now. I was also scared of leaving the house in case it happened again.
“I haven’t gone in the garden since, I can’t look at the mess it’s caused. Financially I’m not in a place to fix the £500 worth of decking that has been damaged either.“
She added: “It was just lucky that we weren’t away for my daughter’s birthday when it happened because if we were I wouldn’t have known about the fire and the whole lot would have been gone. You don’t know what could have happened. I’m constantly on high alert now.“
The mum is calling for fireworks to be banned, she said: “I think it should be banned for people to buy them. I have two dogs and two cats, they could have been out there and my 17-year-old beagle can’t manoeuvre fast. I usually leave my back door open for them to go in and out. If I had left the door open the fire would have come into the kitchen and that is where my gas boiler is. I’m just so thankful we hadn’t gone on holiday.“
A spokesperson for Merseyside Fire and Rescue Service said: “Fire crews were called to a fire in the rear garden of a property on Radnor Place, Birkenhead August 18, with one fire engine in attendance. Crews were alerted at 10.19pm and on scene at 10.28pm.
“Crews arrived to find a small fire in a rear garden which was extinguished by a garden hose by 10.43pm. It is believed that the fire was caused by a firework landing in the garden. Crews left the scene at 10.54pm.”
