A FAMILY of five has been displaced after their two-bedroom house was burnt to the ground in an early morning fire in Newtown on Tuesday.
Distraught homeowners Pita and Amelia Kainavatu could not come to terms with their loss and struggled with their words in an interview with this newspaper.
"We've lost everything, there's nothing else left," an emotional Mr Kainavatu said.
The house, an extension of the front building caught fire around 10am and firefighters, when they arrived, contained the fire which was threatening to spread to the front building.
However, Mrs Kainavatu said the firemen were too late to save anything.
"We had placed a call immediately to the 911 emergency number but couldn't get a hold of anyone, we had to call about five times when the person at the other end advised us to dial 912 which was for fire," Mrs Kainavatu said.
She said she did not know what the cause of the fire was because she was at her neighbour's place.
"My children had noticed fire coming from the back and then everything happened at once and we couldn't control the fire," she added.
A tearful Mrs Kainavatu said they would have to begin from scratch to rebuild their house.
The National Fire Authority in a statement said investigations into the incident were continuing.