Appliance fire - Lorraine's story

My name’s Lorraine Ward.

On the morning of the fire, my husband had the children in the living room playing and he just put the tumble dryer on around 8am. He looked sort of around the corner where the tumble dryer was and there were two foot flames flying out of the tumble dryer.

The second that I came out of the bedroom I just saw how thick the smoke was and how it grabbed your breath. I’ve never experienced anything like it. It was frightening; you couldn’t have seen a hand in front of your face.

From start to finish, it was around six weeks in hotels before we actually got into a house. We had to kit the new house out from complete scratch, it was everything from knives and forks, cutlery, baby bottles, clothes, shoes, settees, beds. The things that we lost that we can’t replace were the photos.

It definitely affected my oldest daughter the most. She was terribly panicky at any noises that sounded even remotely like a fire alarm.

The communication with our solicitor at Leigh Day has been fantastic.

I was really, really worried. Our solicitor straight away with a few telephone conversations, allayed those fears. He explained things really clearly.

Our solicitor at Leigh Day, put us in touch with a private cognitive behavioural therapist, a counsellor for our eldest daughter and within two weeks she was seen privately and went through a twelve week intensive course and that really, really helped her.

We have agreed settlement with the manufacturer of the tumble dryer, we’re just now waiting for any final costings and things to be ironed out.

I’d really like manufacturers of white goods to look at the parts that they’re using, where they’re sourcing them from and also, to look at the recall system.

That really does need a major overhaul; it needs something better to notify people. There were recalls out on the products that we’d bought and we didn’t see any of them."