TEN YEARS ON: Natasha Timmins and her daughter Shaydine, 16. PHOTO/JOHN BORREN
Ten years on and there is not a day Natasha Timmins does not think of the moment when her two boys, Kahvan and Cayden, were taken from her in a house fire which engulfed their Otumoetai home. Ruth Keber reports.
Each year Natasha Timmins puts her boys' ashes on the kitchen table and scatters their photos around them.
Blue and green balloons float around the room in remembrance.
Kahvan's favourite colour was blue, while Cayden's was green.
Later that day she releases the balloons into the sky.
"Kahvan my eldest, was quite a deep boy. He was very softly spoken and thought about things a lot.
"He was very caring, if he ever saw you cry he would catch your tears and get you tissues. They would both come running and give you a cuddle. He was a typical little boy, tutuing, touching and breaking, 'how does this work', and would pull the wheels off a little car.
"They used to get into mischief a lot those two. Cayden was the laugher, he used to make jokes all the time, put things on his head, dance around and be silly."
Their pictures adorn her lounge room.
Ten years on Miss Timmins wants to warn others of the importance of having working smoking alarms in their homes.
Something which could have saved her two boys' lives.
Kahvan Beatty, 4, and his brother Cayden, 2, perished in the early morning blaze, which a forensic examination found began when a heat source was placed on a couch.
Miss Timmins and her daughter Shaydine, 6, escaped the fire, which engulfed the front of her weatherboard house in minutes and prevented anyone reaching the boys.
I remember glancing up at the sky and having this feeling and I just knew they had died. I remember saying to the lady, 'my sons are in there, my sons are in there and they are dying' then I looked at her and said 'my babies are gone'.
On June 16, 2005, Miss Timmins woke to a bang and realised her two little boys were not in bed with her - where they had gone to bed the night before.
She had woken up at about 6.30am by her kittens jumping around the house.
She put them outside and went back to bed with her two youngest children, Kahvan and Cayden.
"All I remember next is hearing a bang noise and being startled when I realised the kids weren't in bed with me. I jumped up and saw the hallway was full of smoke."
Miss Timmins started running to the lounge to look for her boys but thought they could have been in their rooms so went there first and found the room empty.
She then went to Shaydine's room [her eldest daughter] and found her asleep in her bed.
"I pulled her from the bed, opened the back door and told her to run next door over the fence where uncle lived and to tell them there is a fire and not to come back.
"I then ran back in and by then the smoke, within seconds, was even more intense. I got as far as the kitchen but I couldn't see or breathe and the heat was that intense. You could feel your hair singeing.
"The noise, you couldn't hear anything at all. It was so loud the crackling and the roaring. I thought of getting wet blankets [to cover herself to get to her boys] but all that stuff was down the other end of the house, I couldn't get there."
The scared mother ran outside for fresh air where she found six-year-old Shaydine still sitting at the back door.
"I said to her you've got to go next door and tell uncle that there's a fire and don't come back here. With that I ran back in again and realised breathing that stuff in was so painful, the heat, and I couldn't see. I was screaming 'fire, fire' hoping somebody might hear me but I couldn't even hear myself within the house."
She left through the backdoor again and tried to get into the house through the front door.
"It was locked ... so I got the pot plants and started smashing them through the door and yelling to them, 'come to mummy's voice' ... they were screaming for mummy and I was screaming back 'crawl to mummy, crawl to mummy's voice'. It was pitch black, I couldn't see anything and I couldn't get into the door.
"No one came, it felt like it was going in slow motion but it all happened so fast. I could hear them screaming 'mummy' but I knew I couldn't get in and I knew that I needed help."
Miss Timmins ran to a neighbours to get help and blacked out on the driveway.
When she came to fire was leaping from the windows and lounge.
A woman stopped her from entering the house again.
More people crowded and the fire brigade turned up as the fire intensified.
"I remember glancing up at the sky and having this feeling and I just knew they had died. I remember saying to the lady, 'my sons are in there, my sons are in there and they are dying' then I looked at her and said 'my babies are gone'."
To this day Miss Timms has never forgiven herself for not being able to save her little boys.
"I felt responsible. I felt it was my fault. As a mum you make it better and you hold that forever, mummies make things better and they fix your sore knee, they put cold cloths on you when you are sick, they take you to the doctor. They fix things."
Miss Timmins believes there was one thing which could have saved her boys' lives - a smoke alarm.
I don't think anybody can get over losing a child and I lost both my sons, there are no words that can express the pain. Especially the way they went. That's the biggest thing for me, it was a horrible way, a scary, scary horrible thing that they had to feel before they died and that haunts me.
There was a difference in opinion on how the fire started in the home, Miss Timmins said.
The coroner ruled the two young boys may have been playing with a naked flame - subsequently setting the sofa ablaze.
Miss Timmins said the fire was started just in front of the gas heater yet it was not checked as a cause for the fire, she said.
There was a smoke alarm in the house but it had been taken down because the battery was flat.
A new battery had been bought but had not yet been put into the device because it had been misplaced, she said.
Miss Timmins said she has never been able to move on from her grief of losing the two boys.
"I don't think anybody can get over losing a child and I lost both my sons, there are no words that can express the pain. Especially the way they went. That's the biggest thing for me, it was a horrible way, a scary, scary horrible thing that they had to feel before they died and that haunts me."
Miss Timmins has gone through every emotion of losing her little boys but has picked up her life and has had three more children, Navaya, 7, Zeanna, 6, and Bracyn, 4.
"Having more children does not replace any child you have lost. It's definitely a blessing having them and it makes my day go by even when they fight."
It was not was something she wanted to do after being through the trauma of losing Kahvan and Cayden, she said.
"Life just sort of stopped as everybody else moved on. To think of bringing somebody into that ... after finding out I was pregnant I felt guilty. Guilty for smiling or laughing with somebody."
The fire changed the way she raised her family with safety absolutely paramount in their lives.
It feels like yesterday the fire happened yet a lifetime since I got to hold Kahvan and Cayden and tell them that I love them.
She has a smoke alarm in every room of her house and sleeps with a fire extinguisher next to her with another one located in the kitchen.
The alarms get checked every six weeks to see they are in working order.
Parents and families who did not have working fire alarms in their homes were playing Russian roulette, she said.
"You think it is not going to happen to you, you think that will happen to other people, you read about that happening to other people. But it does happen to you. It happens and you can't turn back time."
"It feels like yesterday the fire happened yet a lifetime since I got to hold Kahvan and Cayden and tell them that I love them."
Two helicopters and five fire engines are battling the blaze.