A young South Island family is faced with the prospect of having to start their lives again from scratch after their Motueka home was destroyed in a fire . Jules Williams, 25, had recently given birth to her third child, a baby boy named Malakai, with her partner Paul Madsen. Little Malakai wasn’t breathing when he was born and was then revealed to have an enlarged kidney.
Williams herself was hospitalised with sepsis days after his birth, and ended up in intensive care for a week. Following that, Williams, Madsen and their youngest two children were driving home from a hospital appointment for Malakai when they got a call from Williams’ father to tell them their house was on fire. “We were on our way home from the hospital on the highway and my dad called, and he was just asking if the kids were with us and stuff like that,” Williams told the Herald .
“And then I could sense that something was wrong, so I asked him what was happening, what was wrong, and he told us our house was on fire.” Williams and Madsen rushed to their oldest daughter Lunahbelle’s kindy, Motueka Steiner Kindergarten, to pick her up. “Then we didn’t go back to the house for a few days — about a week,” Williams says, adding that as far as they know, the fire was accidental.
“They haven’t identified any cause.” According to Fire and Emergency, the fire was not suspicious. The couple did not have insurance and have lost everything, from clothing and furniture to toys, to sentimen.
