MUM SAYS TODDLER ALERTED HER TO FLAT FIRE
AMOTHER says her 17-month-old daughter managed to alert her to a fire in their flat. Kiera McCarthy, 19, says if it wasn’t for her little girl pulling her into the kitchen, the situation could have been a lot worse.
The young mum and her daughter had to flee their home in Bettws, Newport, after their fire alarm failed to go off on Friday, June 7.
In the process, they have lost everything in the fire which quickly took hold in their home.
The pair are now staying at Kiera’s mother’s home with all of them in the same bedroom, but this has proved to be challenging as Kiera says baby Marliya was “in a routine” in the flat and this has now been turned upside-down.
The flat is currently uninhabitable with many of their belongings ruined.
Kiera says most of it is unsalvageable as a result of water and smoke damage.
She said: “I was in the kitchen making some breakfast for my baby.
“She’s attached to my hip all the time and as I’m making breakfast I glance over to the microwave, which is next to the oven, and I think she kicked the hob dial because they are so easy to flick on.
“Her bottle steriliser was on top of the hob so it must have started from there but the fire alarms didn’t go off so I went back into the living room and fed her breakfast and everything.
“So this fire must have been going on while I’m feeding her breakfast.
“She basically finished her breakfast and goes back into her bedroom, playing, and she must have seen it.
“She came back into the living room and was pulling me and so I went with her.
“She’s 17 months and was showing me there was a fire.
“The fire alarm still hasn’t gone off at this point and it must have been going on for like 10 minutes and it was quite big at that point.
“I was thinking: ‘Do I try and put it out? Do I not?’
“It didn’t seem too big but my baby was breathing in the smoke. So I thought: ‘No, I’m going to have to leave.’ So I left.”
Kiera, who lives in a top-floor flat, rang the fire service.
After another 10 minutes the fire alarm went off and emergency services arrived.
She said: “The fire brigade opened all the windows but you could see the black smoke coming out and honestly it was horrific.
“Usually my baby goes down for a nap at that time, I go in my bedroom and I shut the door, and if that was the case and we were in bed we wouldn’t have got out.
“By the time the fire alarm went off we probably would have been dead so we are quite lucky that we actually got out.
“It’s so lucky that I was awake and I was able to get to the fire and see it to get out in time.”
It was just the two of them in the flat at the time and Kiera, who has no home insurance, has found dealing with the event has been difficult, as she says there is little information available to guide her through what to do until she can find new accommodation.
A fundraiser set up by her aunt has now raised about £1,200 to help support her in the meantime.
She said: “I’d been so happy living in that flat. I built everything up over time and managed to get everything that I needed and it is quite sad to be honest.
“I was finally in a place in my life where I was happy and now it just feels like I’ve lost everything.
“I feel like I don’t really know where to go, who to go to about it.
“It’s hard for my Marliya as well because she’s always been in her own room.
“She’s out of routine and doesn’t know what’s going on and she’s quite miserable because she’s just so confused.”
Kiera’s aunt Kerrianne Harris wrote on the fundraiser: “As a family we are rallying around to try to provide as much as we can for them but a lots of friends have suggested setting up this page as a way of others being able to help them too.
“Anything would be very gratefully received... I know things are so hard for everyone right now too.”
As Kiera’s flat is owned by the council, she has requested to be moved into new accommodation in Bettws or somewhere else nearby so she can be close to family.
“EVERYTHING has changed” since that day for Leeanne Bartley.
Her 18-year-old son went swimming with his friends and never came home.
Mark Allen’s body succumbed to the freezing temperatures of Gorton reservoir in Manchester.
The teenager, from Ruthin, Denbighshire, was enjoying the summer sun with his friends but they had no idea of the dangers that lurked beneath the water on June 5, 2018.
Today, Leeanne campaigns alongside Water Safety Wales for others to stay safe around the sea, rivers and other open water after statistics showed a rise in accidental drowning deaths involving people aged under 20 for a second year running.
Seven people under 20 died in accidental water-related fatalities in Wales in 2023 – the highest number since comparable data became available from the National Water Safety Forum’s Water Incident Database (WAID) in 2015.
Since her son’s death, Leeanne has campaigned tirelessly for better water safety measures in Wales and across the UK, including petitions calling for rescue equipment to be mandatory.
Recounting the worst day of her life, she said: “I got a phone call to basically say he was missing. And that was it.
“I didn’t have a clue what was going on. And I said ‘missing, like how?’ as nobody knew what had happened.
“It wasn’t until some time after that when I spoke to Mark’s dad, and a police officer came on the phone and that’s how I found out.
“We just all got into the car and headed up to Manchester.
“We had originally arranged for Mark to come down later on that week, as his accident happened on the Tuesday, and he was supposed to be coming down to stay at ours for a few days on the Friday so it changed quickly.”
Leeanne also found out later down the line that her son had attempted to call her moments before he died, with neither of them knowing it would have been the last time.
She said: “I was stood in the post office queue and had seen he had called, and tried to ring him back.
“But at that point I had no clue what was going on because this was before he went missing – and it turned out that when I looked at the time, he’d called me at ten past four, which was the same time he jumped in and I had no idea when I was ringing him back that he was no longer alive.”
Mark, who was studying performing arts as a sixth-former in Manchester, was described as a “talented actor” by his mum, and when he died it was at a time when he had just started to pick up jobs in the field.
Leeanne said: “I’ve got no doubt that he would have gone on and moved on to bigger roles as time went on.
“He was exceptionally talented and he got a distinction in his performing arts – we received that after.”
After Mark died by drowning, Leeanne became determined to keep a promise she made as she saw her son’s body that she would do all she could to stop anyone else suffering from a loss of life in the same way, believing that is what he would have wanted.
She said: “He was always trying to get people to feel better. By me carrying on in this way it’s a positive legacy for him.
“We are trying to get a law passed that places throwline stations around all bodies of open water in Wales. It’s hard but I do not give up.”
Describing her son, Leeanne said: “He was just like the laugh a minute. When he was younger, he’d talk to oak trees and was big on wildlife and would lift everyone up; he was such a character; he was so funny.
“He loved Paris. He was special child of merit in his year five of primary school and was a super protective big brother, and protective of all his siblings, was always smiling and loved cake.
“When he got to accomplish his dream of going up the Eiffel Tower in April 2018 shortly before we lost him, he rang me from the top – and I hate heights – and he made me promise him that from the top, saying ‘Next time you go to Paris, Mum, you must go up the Eiffel tower, promise me.’
“So I did that last year with my daughter Lauren.”
Leeanne’s petition to the Senedd got 11,000 signatures and led to a report by the petitions committee.
Statistics show that about 50 people a year lose their lives to water-related fatalities in Wales and during the seven months the committee was investigating the issue, at least three young people died from drowning in Wales.
Leeanne, who has six children, including Mark, said: “We never want anyone to stop doing something that they enjoy.
“We don’t want people to stop enjoying water but we want them to just take some time to be aware of the potential dangers.
“We had no idea where Mark was, and now I do say to my children, ‘let me know where you are and where you’re going’, and it is that that can make all the