A homeless woman has lost everything she owns in a massive storage unit fire in Brisbane.
Irene Schynol, 69, had all her possessions inside the storage unit on Old Gympie Road, in Burpengary.
She told Today that she has been homeless for four years and sleeps in her car.
She was left “devastated” when she learned about the fire.
“I felt for everybody that had their belongings in there,” Schynol said.
”Everything is in there…I’ve been paying [for] storage so I wouldn’t have to go out and buy everything.
“When my sister passed away, I had a little bit of money and I went out and bought all the stuff that I ever needed.”
She told Today that she had pictures of her adopted baby, who passed away, inside the unit, as well as a novel she had been writing for years.
“It’s about starting again… I know that somehow I will be okay, somehow it’ll all just work out.
“At the moment, I’m just feeling in shock, to be honest.”
Up to 75 firefighters were battling the blaze, which broke out at the business on Old in Burpengary, at about 6pm last night.
“A large volume of smoke is affecting the surrounding area, including the Bruce Highway,” firefighters warned.
Police made an emergency declaration under the Public Safety Preservation Act about an hour late, affecting the reasonably large area within the bounds of New Settlement, Pitt, Bellini, Twists and Old Bay roads.
“Members of the public are advised to avoid the area and those within the exclusion zone are asked to remain indoors and close their windows until further notice,” police said.
“A number of roads in the area are being affected due to the large amount of smoke from the fire.”
Queensland Fire Department acting Inspector Daniel Rasmussen said it would be “quite a long night”.
“It’s going to be quite a protracted incident due to the nature of the construction of the building and the nature of a storage facility, has lots of different rooms and lots of different items inside,” he said.
He said the fire was in one half of the building, separated by a firewall and “got quite big, quite fast”.
“The firefighters have done a great job to contain the fire, stopping it to spread to the other buildings, stopping it to spread to the other half of the building that’s on fire, and to contain it so that when it does collapse, it’s not going to do any more damage to other buildings,” he said.
