By Casey Neill
A Springvale mum saved her daughter, mother and brother when a candle set her unit alight.
“I thought I was going to die,” Thalia Bhandari told the Journal.
“My mind was just ‘save everyone’ and I was prepared to die really.
“Thanks to God, I made it.
“When you’re in that situation, you just want to save everyone.
Ms Bhandari lit the candle because power to her View Road unit had been cut on the morning of Monday 1 May during a switch between electricity providers.
“We fell asleep about midnight,” she told the Journal.
“I woke up to the smell, and I quickly grabbed (my four-year-old daughter).
“I took her outside the house and then I went back in and got my mum out and my brother out as well.
“All the smoke went in my throat, I couldn’t breathe properly.
“I still can’t breathe properly.
“The ambulance said that I could get worse day by day.
“At the time, when the ambulance came I was OK, just in shock.
“Now (17 hours after the fire) I feel like my throat is really itchy and I can’t hear properly.”
The Springvale and Dandenong CFA crews were called to a fire in a bedroom in the two-bedroom unit about 12.30am on Tuesday 2 May.
A CFA spokesperson said nobody was inside when the firefighters arrived and it was “fairly extensively involved in fire”.
“It appears to be in the roof space,” the spokesperson said.
Ms Bhandari said “the whole house was destroyed, now I’ve lost everything”.
“I’m with a neighbour at the moment,” she said.
“We’ll see what happens next.”
