'The firefighters are our heroes'

Tubber-based cake designer tells of lucky escape after garage inferno

A multi-award-winning local cake designer has praised the quick action of the fire service in averting the loss of her home and business after a fire broke out in the garage beside her family home last week.

“It took no more than five minutes for a small fire in the garage to escalate into an inferno,” said a shocked Tanya Ross, who is the owner of Novel-T Cakes in Parkwood, outside Tubber, on the Westmeath border with Offaly, “and the fire service really are our heroes because they worked so hard to contain the fire and stop it spreading to the house.”

Recalling the speed at which the fire broke out, Tanya said she was working on one of her cake designs in her workshop, which is located in the family home, at around 10.10pm on Tuesday night last, April 8, while her husband had gone to bed.

“I work really late, so I had the music blaring and my workshop is at the other end of the house to the garage, so I never heard a thing, but John heard noise outside so he got up to investigate, and he noticed a small light under the garage door.”

They quickly realised it was a fire, so Tanya rang the fire service and the first unit to arrive “within about ten minutes” came from nearby Clara, and was followed by units from Tullamore.

“Even though the garage is detached and is about eight metres from the house, all the gutters, fascia, soffits and downpipes were sizzling and melting from the heat and the glass is cracked in all the windows on the side of the house nearest to the garage,” she said.

"We were incredibly lucky the house wasn't gutted as well.”

An ESB crew was also called to the scene by the fire service at around midnight to check overhead power lines after they began to melt from the heat of the flames, according to Tanya.

While many of the precious family possessions were lost in last week's fire, including childhood photographs belonging to Tanya, and a tractor which her two sons, Dylan and Ethan, had purchased and were “lovingly restoring” she says “at least what we lost was only stuff, we are all safe and well and the family home is still standing, so we have a lot to be thankful for.”

She says the garage was “like every garage in the country, if something is not in the house it gets put out into the garage” so her husband, John, who works as a maintenance engineer and had plans to start his own business after retirement, had “a big collection of electrical tools built up, all of which were in the garage.” Her son, Ethan, had just purchased a new motorbike eight weeks ago which was also lost in the fire. “He worked for two years to save money for the bike and it was his pride and joy” said his mother. Also in the garage were two freezers, the water tank and pump, a water softener, and an e-scooter.

“Because we are on a rural water scheme and the pump in the garage pumps water into the house, we were also out of water after the fire,” says Tanya.

It took the fire service until 2.30am on Wednesday morning last to bring the garage fire at the Ross home under control as Tanya says they had to extinguish the flames “at least three or four times.” As of now, the family has “no clue” as to what caused the fire, although Tanya points out that there were a lot of items in the garage “with either a plug or a battery”.

While she is still coming to terms with the fire, Tanya says the family are “very, very lucky” that the garage fire did not break out while they were sleeping.

“We know how lucky we are to be safe and to still have our home.....it could have been an awful lot worse.”