A family from Twyford has praised the fire service after a block of ice crashed through the roof of their house on Sunday morning.
Richard Burt and his wife Ava Hendricks were caring for Richard’s parents, Allen and Audrey, at their home in Wagtail Close when they heard a loud crash.
Richard said: “We were giving my mother, who has Parkinson’s disease, her morning wash when we heard this loud noise. It was hard to pin-point where it came from at first, but my father insisted it had come from one of the bedrooms.
“My wife went to have a look and found a large crack in the ceiling with water dripping through. The door of the loft hatch was jammed shut so we couldn’t get up there to have a look at the damage, but from outside it was clear that something had plummeted through the roof with some force.
“There was a clean hole in the roof, and a number of tiles had come away so whatever it was had fallen from a great height. It was my father who suggested that it may have fallen from a passing plane.
“We were concerned that there might be damage to the electricals and the plumbing in the loft, but our biggest fear was that the ceiling might collapse.”
Mr Burt immediately called his insurance company, Halifax, who assured him that a contractor would visit the house to assess the damage as the incident was a high-risk emergency due to the nature of the damage and his parent’s ill-health, but after several hours of waiting and being passed from one automated phone line to another, he called the fire service.
He said: “I called the fire crew at 12.46pm, and within 15 minutes they were at the front door.
“They managed to wedge open the hatch door, it turned out the locking mechanism had broken, but they were able to get up there and have a look.
“There were a number of broken tiles and blocks of ice in the loft, but as it it is so well-insulated a lot of it had melted which had caused the water to drip through.
“The firemen were incredibly helpful, they managed to patch up the hole with a temporary cover and clear away some of the debris. They would have been within their rights to charge us for the service because it didn’t fall under their remit, but they told us they wouldn’t, which I was very grateful for.
“With the inclement weather and my parents’ ill-health the firemen did the best they could to protect the roof, but of course it isn’t weather-tight and they aren’t engineers so it really needs to be sorted out.
“I am just amazed at the contrast between the insurance company, who say they provide this emergency care which my parents had paid outright for, but have so far failed to act, and the fire crews who were here within 15 minutes of being called.
“The insurance company have refunded us the premium that my father paid for the emergency cover, but I asked them to make a donation to the fire service to cover the charge that they easily could have billed us, but they refused.”
Halifax were contacted but had not responded by the time of publication.
