A FAULTY mobile phone charger started a fire at a home which left a pet cat dead.
The Roberts family of Stryt Las, Rhos, say their Christmas has been ruined by the fire which broke out in a bedroom at their house shortly before 10pm on Friday.
Christmas gifts worth hundreds of pounds were destroyed in the fire and Wendy, 50, and David, 53, and their sons Tryfan, 24, and Dafydd, 18, have now been forced to sleep on airbeds downstairs.
“We are beyond devastated,” said Tryfan, a data analyst at Avos on Wrexham Industrial Estate.
“It’s all so raw. You wake up and you think for a split second that everything is okay and then you remember.”
Tryfan and his brother and father, a Scottish Power inspector, were watching television downstairs as the tragedy unfolded.
“My brother said he could smell smoke and we thought it was coming from his laptop at first,” said former Ysgol y Grango pupil Tryfan.
“Then suddenly a plume of black smoke filled the living room.
“It was unbelievable how fast it happened.”
The trio raced upstairs where mother Wendy, a nurse at Wrexham Maelor Hospital, lay unconscious in bed.
“We couldn’t wake her up,” said Tryfan.
“We carried her downstairs and out of the front door and I think the cold air made her come round.”
Their dogs – eight-year-old Yorkshire terrier cross chihuahua Jack and 15-year-old lurcher Casper – were rescued from the house but the family cat Tiger, two, who was asleep upstairs, was not so fortunate.
“My mum is really cut up about Tiger,” said Tryfan.
“Especially since we took him in as a kitten after we found him abandoned in the street.”
Tryfan’s bedroom was destroyed in the fire along with his computer, television, clothes and Christmas gifts for the family worth £300.
Fire investigators said the fire was caused by an electrical fault with a phone charger, which had been plugged into a four-way socket, but was not in use when the fire broke out.
“My nan and grandad used to unplug everything before bed and I used to think it was silly but they had the right idea,” added Tryfan.
Tryfan thanked quick-thinking firefighters and neighbours for their support.
“If the fire service hadn’t arrived when they did it could have been a lot worse,” said Tryfan.
One pump from Wrexham and one from Johnstown were sent to the scene and crews remained for more than an hour.
A fire service spokesman said: “A female was checked over by the ambulance service at the scene, but sadly a cat died.”
The family is now liaising with their insurance company to recover the cost of the damage.