NI man speaks out to warn of dangers after appliance catches fire at family home
A Co Down bus driver whose home nearly went on fire in a blaze caused by a tumble dryer is speaking out to warn others of the dangers.
Michael Hutchinson described to Belfast Live how footage captured on his home security cameras showed how the fire escalated from just a few wisps of smoke inside his garage to a roaring blaze within six minutes.
He is speaking out to urge people not to leave tumble driers running with no one home, as he described how lucky he was that someone was able to raise the alarm when the fire started in the early hours of Thursday.
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The Northern Ireland Fire and Rescue Service responded quickly when the blaze broke out at his home in Annahilt overnight between Wednesday and Thursday, he said.
The fire started in a tumble drier left on overnight in a garage.
“When I looked at the security camera, six minutes was all it took from the smoke being detected until the thing went up full-tilt,” he said. And I was thinking, if that was in your kitchen or your scullery or whatever, you would have been dead.
“At that time of night, you’d have maybe heard the beeper going off if you had a smoke alarm, and then by the time you got up, the smoke would have been up around you and you could have been unconscious. It doesn’t bear thinking about.”
He continued: “Basically what happened was the daughter came home and she had no t-shirts for her work,” he explained. “I was sitting up watching a show on TV and I said, ‘listen, I’ll put your clothes in the washing machine here, do one of those quick cycles, I’ll throw it in the tumble dryer and I’ll be ready for you in the morning’. It must have been about about 12:30 or quarter to one when I put the tumble dryer on, and there’s like a timer on it so I put it on and went to bed.
“The mother-in-law was staying and she got up. Thank God she was here because none of us would have heard it. Her bedroom’s beside the garage, you know, so she, she went up to go to the toilet when she was coming back, she saw like a light and thought I must be out in the garage doing something. She looked out the window and the flames were all coming up around, you know, she could see it through the window of the garage, the flames. So she came into the bedroom, trying to wake us up.”
He said in his slumber it took a moment for him to register the danger.
“I’m still sleeping, you know, and then it went into my brain – ‘the garage is on fire’. I jumped up in the underpants, straight out the door.”
He said he suffered burns while trying to deal with the fire prior to the arrival of the Northern Ireland Fire and Rescue Service.
“Fair play to the fire brigade, they were here in no time, honest to God, they were brilliant.”
With the fire dealt with, and everyone safe and sound, Mr Hutchinson is keen to stress the potential risks of using appliances like a tumble drier.
“Do not leave a tumble drier on home alone,” he said. “I keep thinking to myself ‘six minutes’ – six minutes is all it took and six minutes isn’t very much. You can easily understand how fatalities happen.”
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