Charlotte Varcoe
AN electric lawn mower has caused significant damage to a Tarpeena house after spontaneously combusting.
Early Tuesday morning, resident Melissa Canham and her family woke to the smell of smoke as their home began to go up in flames causing an estimated $80,000 damage.
Ms Canham and her family quickly exited the house with her daughter calling the Country Fire Service and herself using the garden hose to extinguish as much of the flames as possible.
“We were all asleep and I smelled something hot,” Ms Canham told The Border Watch.
“It smelled like something burning and I thought maybe the woodfire heater hadn’t been turned down so I got up to go have a look and I saw bright lights out on the patio.
“I started screaming ‘fire’ and ‘get out’.”
After getting her family out of the house, Ms Canham fought the fire to the best of her ability while her partner raced to the local CFS stations for help.
Authorities investigated the cause of the fire and concluded it was a battery from the electric lawn mower.
Ms Canham said the battery was not plugged in and was only purchased a few months ago.
“When we brought the lawn mower we never thought anything like this would happen. We thought it was going to be awesome for the little patches of grass that I mow,” she said.
“I will never get an electric lawn mower again and will never buy battery-operated things like this as it isn’t worth it.”
With the property uninsured due to inflation costs, Ms Cranham said the rebuild was now up to herself and family members.
“We don’t know where to start,” she said.
“At the moment we are just trying to clean everything as we have no power, no water and we need all the electricity to be redone because SA Power had to cut the power to the house.
“We don’t have insurance at the moment either because we had it for 14 years and with the cost of living and inflation we couldn’t afford it anymore so we had to cancel it.”
Ms Cranham said throughout the entire time they had lived in the house they had not made a single insurance claim.
“Everything started piling up like the power prices, food, school fees and school stuff – it just made us broke,” she said.
“We need help to rebuild whether it be financial or donations because we are going to have to rebuild by hand.”
Unable to live in the house in its current state, Ms Cranham has had to resort to living with her son and his partner who were expecting a baby in the coming days.
“The house stinks, even where the fire didn’t reach it is unlivable so we are also going to have to repaint the house as well,” she said.
“If people have an electric lawn mower then they need to make sure the battery is contained so if it does start a fire then at least it won’t spread too far.”
