Our story

Years ago around 1:00 am on December 27, 2011 our family home was severely damaged by fire.

We had enjoyed Christmas morning with family and not two weeks later, I was standing on an empty block of land. The fire stripped away everything we knew, everything that resembled our lives and who we were before the fire.

In the hours and days after the fire, my ability to process simple thoughts eluded me.  I had no idea where to start, no leads, no-one pointing the way.  My head was a shambles, I could not coordinate my thoughts to make considered decisions. The carpet to our world had been pulled out from under us.

Somehow I had to put my emotions to the side and work out how to co-ordinate the clean up, deal with council’s demand to remove the house off the block by the end of the first week, as well protecting our kids from further trauma.  All the while we were trying to re-engage with the demands of paid work.

My anger began to manifest itself three, four, six months later, when I understood that all this time had passed and l hadn’t got my life together. I had expected some semblance of normality by now.  In utter frustration I turned inwards, insisting to myself that I get over it. I felt an intense need to get my life in order, not understanding how recovery unfolds, I had no reference points to let me know we were on the right path and no ‘permission’ to experience this whirlwind of emotions.

The reality of our lives hit me when I realised that we were never going back there – to the life before the fire – and would certainly never be those people again, a family without trauma.  We’d been catapulted into a life of loss, uncertainty and confusion. As a family we’d become dysfunctional.  As with every other aspect of our lives, looking at our three young children in their donated clothes, they were barely recognisable.  We had totally lost our sense of who we were.

We lived in a cloud of confusion.  We were struggling.

I could never have foreseen the night terrors and developmental delays in our children, the absence of my husband’s emotions, how differently he experienced the fire, the financial pressures and my own ill health.

This is the experience of a family that, from the time the fire was put out, were not provided with support, were not given direction of where to go, what to do first and next.  No-one checked up on our well being, followed up how we were doing with the practicalities of recovery.

This is the impact on individuals when the recovery system is not triggered and breaks down at the start. It was a source of disappointment to discover that the doors to the many agencies and organisations which could have given us the help we needed, not only material but also mental and emotional were left unopened.

If this is how we felt, I knew with deep concern that there must be many other people affected in the same way who experience the same level of trauma when there is a house fire. I wanted to make sure that other families, other individuals involved in a single incident emergency such as ours were given timely help, given the direction, the support and the resources to guide them to a recovery that minimises the trauma and enhances their changed lives.

Since then, with the support of a number of people, I have been working to create a better solution for recovery to house fires and to understand what a good recovery can look like.

This information names the first steps to recovery and follows recovery from SURVIVING TO THRIVING.

Rising from the Ashes

My thanks to the MFB (Melbourne Fire Brigade) who were proactive, saw the need for an improvement in the recovery process after a house fire and developed the video. The video helps fire fighters understand what happens when the first step to recovery is not triggered.

Following a huge wildfire in Oakland Hills, California, in 1991, Shay Sayre at California State University in Fullerton recorded the feelings of survivors.  

When people lose their possessions, reflected Sayre, questions of the self become critical, for if we are what we own, who are we when we own nothing?
(Being Human/New Scientist The Collection page 73)