Huge blaze sees mum and daughter, 10, lose 'everything' when fire alarm failed
A mum says she and her daughter "could have died" in a huge fire which broke out in their home and claimed the life of their beloved cat, as the alarm did not sound.
Natalie McDevitt and her daughter had left their home in Paisley on to go shopping and later returned to find their flat engulfed in flames with their cat, Zevon, trapped inside. Firefighters managed to put out the blaze around 7pm. Natalie, 30, discovered the fire alarm in her ground-floor flat wasn't connected to the power supply. She believes the fire may have been caused by an electrical fault and has accused Renfrewshire Council of moving her into a dangerous flat without a working fire alarm, something the council denies.
Natalie told the Daily Record: "It's been horrendous. I moved back in on the Monday and by Wednesday evening everything in the house was gone. The fact is my cat perished in the fire and it could have been me and my daughter.
"Zevon was at the heart of our family. When he was carried out it was unbearable to think that's how he lost his life. I just wish I got back 10 minutes earlier, I wish I was there to help him. We are so lucky it happened during the day. If it happened at night when we were sleeping with no alarms, the smoke would have got us and we'd not have known what was happening.
"None of my fire alarms were going off. When I got back, the firefighter said I needed to get straight on to the council because they were not linked to the electrics and he was going to add that to his report." It's clear negligence and it makes me think if they missed that what else has been missed?"
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Zevon was trapped inside the ground floor flat (Natalie McDevitt)Natalie had only just come back home three days before the blaze after an earlier fire sparked by a candle, but this time they think it was an overheated kitchen socket. Natalie says she is certain nothing was plugged into it at the time.
She added: "There was a flood to the top floor flat in December 2022. The ceiling came in on the middle flat. They should have checked the electrics for the whole building after that but they never did." My cooker was also always tripping the switch. So, there really are different things which could have caused it and at each point the council could have stepped in but they didn't. Every path I went down they didn't help me."
The result of the huge fire in the home (Andrew Neil)Natalie and her daughter are now trying to start over. She said: "We'd just been moved back in, everything was still in boxes."
"My daughter lost everything, all of her Christmas presents, she didn't even get to play with half of it. It's all gone now. The fire service said that even things that survived the flames are not salvageable because of the smoke damage. We have been staying with friends and family but we have to start again from scratch."
A spokesperson for Renfrewshire Council said: "Fire safety and the safety of tenants is our priority. All health and safety checks to the electric and fire detection system in the property were carried out in November and December last year and no repairs required. All fire detection systems are up to current standard with hard-wired interconnected smoke and heat detectors as well as battery back-up."
* An AI tool was used to add an extra layer to the editing process for this story. You can report any errors to [email protected]
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