Peter Whittlesea & Craig BuchanSouth East
Eva-Amihan NielsenVolunteers are helping to renovate a house so that a family whose cottage was destroyed in a fire have somewhere permanent to live by Christmas.
Olly Room arrived home to his house in Nutley, East Sussex, with his sons in November to find the property alight and 10 fire engines working to extinguish the blaze.
“I can’t thank the people around us enough,” he told the BBC.
Mr Room said he had run into the fire after arriving and managed to get his family’s four pets out but cat Piglet and puppy Zeffie did not survive.
The family’s two other dogs, Dolly and Tilly, are recovering from their ordeal.
“I assume I smashed through the front door, I can’t remember it,” said Mr Room.
“I worked my way through thinking I was going to find a body or find someone any moment,” he told the BBC.
His wife and daughter were safe at a neighbour’s house but he said he found the four pets huddled together and “deeply unconscious”.
An online fundraiser set up by family friend Ami Nielsen to help the family has raised more than £19,000.
“Just put yourself in their shoes,” she said. “You come home and everything’s gone, your pets are in an emergency situation, the clothes on your back are melting, you don’t know where you’re going to live.
“This is quite a stark situation.”
According to Mr Room, the family had contents insurance and received an interim payment of £500 while their claim was being processed.
He said “everyone, from that first moment” has “come around us” to support the family.
