Family lost everything in a matter of minutes

IT WAS just a normal night in a normal pub. The landlords locked up at closing time, their children asleep upstairs, and prepared for another day behind the bar the following morning.

- ROB HARRIES

But after turning everything off, locking the doors, and making their way to bed, something terrible was starting to happen downstairs. A basket full of cloths had caught fire. Smoke smouldered, and soon flames crackled, while the family of four slept in their beds.

“Tt was a Sunday night - October 22, 2023,” recalled James Tanner, who along with his wife Jay owns the Smiths Arms in Foelgastell, 10 miles east of Carmarthen.

“we closed up at around 10.30pm and went to bed as normal. My wife woke at around 4.45am and realised there was no power in the building. She just thought something had tripped a fuse but when she got to the bottom of the stairs she noticed all the smoke. She then ran back up the stairs screaming”

James and Jay's first thought was the safety of their daughters, so they got them out of bed and helped them escape the two-storey building via a window which backed onto a flat roof at the rear of the property.

The two children had at that point spent their whole lives living above the Smiths Arms. Suddenly they were standing in the car park in the darkness, waiting for firefighters to arrive.

With his wife and daughters safe outside, James sat on a window ledge while talking on the phone to the emergency services.

“My mother who lives locally came down with a key because my next priority was saving our cat, Tigger, who lived downstairs,’ said James.

“A fireman who lives in the village also made his way down. I wanted to go in and get Tigger but he warned me about going back into the property.

“The flames had taken hold quite severely by the time the fire service arrived and obviously we feared the worst for the cat, and by the time firefighters found her inside she had died.

“She'd been with us since the Covid lockdown - we took her in as a stray - and obviously the kids were distraught”