The owner of a caravan which caught fire underneath a large complex of new apartment blocks in Braddon has told of her shock.
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Barbara Haggstrom was awoken by fire alarms and evacuated along with hundreds of other people - only to find that her caravan was at the seat of the blaze in the basement.
She and her husband Kurt gave the keys of the car attached to the van to firefighters.
They went in and extinguished the fire and dragged the destroyed caravan up and out.
"All I know is that my caravan is burnt out," Mr Haggstrom said.
"I'm just distraught," Mrs Haggstrom said as the couple stood outside the complex gazing at the burnt-out caravan.
The couple were about to head off to a convention of a-frame campers in Mudgee.
"We've had that van for ten years," she said.
The fire started under a complex of four new six-storey apartment blocks between Ainslie Avenue and Batman Street on Cooyong Street, Braddon. The most likely cause was thought to be an electrical short circuit in the unattended caravan.
The underground parking extends beneath all the blocks.
There are about 600 apartments in total in the four blocks.
According to the Emergency Services Agency (ESA), the apartment blocks were evacuated when the fire alarms went off at around 5am on Tuesday.
The blaze was put out before it could spread to the rest of the complex.
An ESA spokesperson said people were allowed back into the buildings two hours later.
The cause was not yet known.
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Steve Evans
Steve Evans is a reporter on The Canberra Times. He's been a BBC correspondent in New York, London, Berlin and Seoul and the sole reporter/photographer/paper deliverer on The Glen Innes Examiner in country New South Wales. "All the jobs have been fascinating - and so it continues."
Steve Evans is a reporter on The Canberra Times. He's been a BBC correspondent in New York, London, Berlin and Seoul and the sole reporter/photographer/paper deliverer on The Glen Innes Examiner in country New South Wales. "All the jobs have been fascinating - and so it continues."
