Brave dad drags out gas bottles as family caravan goes up in flames

by Damien Sharkov
Mark Hearn should be watching his three young daughters enjoy their holidays with his wife, at the Hearns’ annual caravan getaway, before the unprecedented sunny spells of this outgoing English summer turn sombre.
On Tuesday (20 August) the family of five were buzzing to go, as their 10-year-old family caravan sat in their front garden, fully packed and filled with toys, clothes and camping equipment.
“We were meant to leave on Tuesday night but got delayed so loaded up the caravan and hitched it to the car ready to leave at 4am the following morning,” Mark solemnly recollects.
At 11pm Tuesday night, as their childminder fed the Hearns’ youngest daughter, Julia, their holiday plans, many of their possessions and their caravan, went up in flames.
Mark ran outside with the extinguisher, but the fire had already spread quickly.
“Everything was in there” shares Nicky, Mark’s wife. “Mark is one of the festival volunteers and we are a central point for other YMCA and youth groups who use our full-size gas cooker and tents we’ve collected over the past decade. It’s all been destroyed.”
As the fire threatened to swallow their front garden Mark bravely retrieved the full gas cylinder from inside the caravan and hurled himself inside to carry it as far away from the flames and the house as possible.
As he emerged from the blaze, wife Nicky strapped the cylinder to the back seat of her car and drove it away, down the street.
Two fire crews arrived shortly after, as did police, who received reports of laughter before the fire started.
As a result the incident has been recorded as an act of malice and an arson investigation is due to get underway.
The Fossway Station agree that if the Hearns had let the cylinder heat up “there could have been an explosion in the street”. Thanks to their vigilance no one was hurt.
Mark is unsure how to break the news to his children that their visit to Greenbelt, Europe’s largest Christian festival, will no longer take place.
“The children don’t fully understand what has happened and that everything has gone but they are devastated we might not be going.”
They will surely admire, however, their parents’ bravery, which foiled the awful prospect of even more reckless damage being done to the Hearn household.