An Adelaide mother and son have narrowly escaped a catastrophic house fire that erupted in the middle of the night.
The incident unfolded when Bec Woolhouse was in the bathroom as flames engulfed the bedroom of her Blair Athol home.
A smoke alarm jolted her sleeping son, Nic, awake, prompting a frantic escape from the fire.
“I really thought I was going to die,” Nic told 9News.
Bec was grateful she wasn’t sleeping when the blaze erupted.
“A house you can rebuild but life you can’t, so I’m pretty lucky in that aspect that I wasn’t asleep,” she said.
But she’s been left without a home and with a $50,000 damage bill.
“Everything just went up really quick, I lost photos of my family and my kids and stuff that were up on the wall,” she said.
The fire that ripped through the front of the house drew the attention of neighbours who were awakened by the commotion just after 2am.
“(I saw) the flames shooting out and just jumped straight onto the phone to ring the fire brigade,” witness Malcolm said.
The Metropolitan Fire Service (MFS) suspects the fire was likely started by a faulty phone charger that overheated.
Firefighters issued a warning to always use a charger that comes with a device or one that’s been certified by a manufacturer.
“Otherwise it could lead to catastrophic structure fires like the one that we had last night,” an MFS spokesperson said.
This article was produced with the assistance of 9ExPress.
