UPDATE: Neighbours threw rocks and used a pickaxe to try to free a terrified and screaming pregnant mother and her children in a house fire in Kings Park overnight.
Neighbour Kristian Holland, 15, initially thought nothing of the smashing windows and shouting coming from his neighbours’ in Caxton Court, Kings Park, at about 6.30pm Tuesday. Fighting was regularly heard from the house, but he called the fire brigade when his grandfather Bill Rabiej raised the alarm.
“I looked in the backyard and I had to cover my mouth from the smoke,” Kristian said
He saw toddler girls and their mother who live at the house trapped inside by the fire with bars on the windows. The mother, 43, is pregnant with her thirteenth child. Two other children were at home at the time of the fire. One of those children, Danny, 16, who attends Copperfield College, Kings Park with Kristian, was throwing rocks to try to break the windows to disperse the smoke.
Another neighbour, 23-year-old electrician John North, saw the fire and ran for a pickaxe to try to remove the window bars.
“I ran out back and I saw her trapped in the room with the bars and I just started swinging and trying to get them out,” Mr North said.
He said he asked his fiancé to get water bottles and towels and told the twin toddlers to hold the towels to their faces to reduce the smoke they inhaled.
“I could see flames and there was a lot of smoke,” Mr North said.
Kristian said the fire brigade put the fire out in a matter of minutes.
Metropolitan Fire Brigade Commander Phil Cline said firefighters managed to break in through a back door and rescue the trio.
“They were actually pressed up to the metal bars crying for help,” Mr Cline said.
“So when the firefighters knocked out the fire in the kitchen and lounge room, they proceeded straight through down a hallway and broke into the bedroom.
“And then they literally carried the woman and two children out.”
Danny and another child, Johnny, 12, were treated for minor burns. The mother was taken to the Royal Melbourne Hospital where she is under observation after being treated for smoke inhalation at the scene. The girls escaped uninjured.
A man, 42, has been charged with conduct endangering life and will face the Melbourne Magistrates Court on Wednesday.
