By Casey Neill
Aussie generosity and her faith are getting Thalia Bhandari through her firey nightmare.
The Springvale mother rescued her four-year-old daughter, mother and brother from her burning View Road unit on Tuesday 2 May.
“It hasn’t been easy,” she said of the days following the blaze.
She’s been staying in a hotel in Dandenong, turning to homeless service WAYSS for help and accepting food and clothing from the Red Cross.
“The Red Cross called me up and got us all two pairs of clothes each – two jackets, two pants and some shoes,” she said.
“They also got us some food for the next couple of days.”
The fire destroyed her identification.
“You even lose your identity,” she said.
“It’s really hard when you don’t have ID, people don’t trust you.
“I went to the police and told them what happened and obviously they knew about the fire.”
She wrote a statutory declaration and police provided her with her licence number.
“The bank has been really great,” she said.
She should have replacement bank cards by Friday.
“I’m just taking it day by day. I’m not making any plans,” Ms Bhandari said.
“I have lot of faith in God, and Australians are awesome people.
“They’re caring, they’re considerate and they’re willing to help.
“That’s getting me through.”
However her mother and brother are struggling.
“Emotionally they’re not good,” Ms Bhandari said.
“I’ve been the strongest one in this whole thing.
“My daughter, she’s still in shock.
“She’s still talking about the fire and saying ‘mummy our stuff’s all gone’.”
But the outcome of the fire, started by a candle, could have been much worse.
“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 thought I was going to die,” Ms 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 unit had been cut on the morning of Monday 1 May during a switch between electricity providers.
The electricity company that caused the delay by mistakenly connecting to a different View Road address offered her a night’s free accommodation in a hotel “but he forgot to text me the address so I didn’t know where to go” and she’s yet to follow up.
The family fell asleep about midnight and Ms Bhandari woke up to the smell of fire a short time later.
She grabbed her daughter and took her outside.
“Then I went back in and got my mum out and my brother out as well,” she said.
“All the smoke went in my throat, I couldn’t breathe properly.”
The Springvale and Dandenong CFA crews were called to the scene about 12.30am and arrived to find the unit “fairly extensively involved in fire”.
