We had a lovely time in Singapore, despite having a muppet for a taxi driver. We came home on Sunday and got news that our tenants had accidentally caused a fire at our house in the UK. Here’s a summary from our letting agent:
Having been unable to speak with either yourself direct or Tony (I have left a voice mail) I have some rather bad news to report to you. Our offices have received a call from the Fire Brigade with regards to a fire at your property.
I have just come back from the property having been shown over by the fire brigade after the Fire Investigating Officer had completed his assessment as to the cause.
In brief, the Brigade were called out after receiving a call from the general public who noticed smoke billowing out from the small right hand upper floor window. Time call received 10.29 am.
They had to force entry through the front door, as the property was unoccupied (tenants being at work).
The fire was extinguished.
Resultant damage is that third bedroom was most affected, as the fire started there. The room contained most of the fire therefore the room is charred, double glazed window unit has been destroyed. However, the remainder of the upstairs has been heavily smoke/soot damaged throughout.
The dining room under the third bedroom has been water damaged,due to extinguishing the fire above it.
The remainder of the down stairs is part smoke damaged and again smells heavily of smoke throughout.
The property is currently uninhabitable.
The tenants have lost a considerable amount of their own contents which they were in the throes of moving out.
The cause of the fire has been assessed as an electrical incident and there is no suggestion of arson or deliberatness as to the cause. It would appear that a laptop had been left on charge and that this has caused “the firing point”.
The fire officer reported that if
another 5 – 10 minutes had lapsed the fire would have taken grip and the
roof would have gone up.This clearly will be an insurance issue. We have placed a call to your
insurers, …, quoting policy no …, initially trying to advise
them as to the event. Regretfully, under Data Protection we could not answer
security questions on your behalf and could not progress anything further
with them. Either, yourselves or Tony, will have to deal with this matter
direct with the insurers. The contact number is …Our immediate action has been to try and inform yourselves asap following my
return to the office.
As we have been unable to contact you or Tony, or move forward with the
insurers, we have instructed a contractor to attend to the property asap to
secure/make good the front door and to board up the window and make the
premises as secure as possible.The fire service have taken care of the gas and electric supply.
The Officer In Charge is … of Red Watch, Basingstoke and he can be
contacted on …I appreciate this must be devasting news to you, considering your return
soon back the UK.
The positive news is that the fire assessors / clean-up crew are going in today to see exactly what state it’s all in – we’ll have more info soon.
Update 2008-07-16: We now have some pics of the damage (currently password protected as Katie doesn’t want to see them yet! – contact me for the password).
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And the even scarier thing is that the email I got this morning (sent yesterday UK time) said that if it had been 5-10 minutes longer, then it would have been far, far worse as it would have got hold and the roof would have gone up
O
A Very Scary Thought.
Thank you, firemen, for getting off your bums and getting there as soon as possible!!
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