- WARNING: Offensive language
This is the terrifying moment a couple’s £12,000 garden renovation went up in smoke after their trendy gas firepit exploded.
TikTok user ‘Moll’ shared the clip of her beloved backyard engulfed by flames, as the fire ravaged her home before threatening to spread to neighbouring properties.
The blaze ignited after a suspected gas leak in her ageing firepit caused flames to grow violently out of control.
Bought from a local garden centre four years ago, the trendy accessory featured a fire in the middle of a rattan table. But it exploded last Monday, catching fire to nearby furniture and fencing.
Moll said she and her neighbours attempted to fight the inferno but were later ordered by the fire service to leave it amid fears two gas bottles could ‘blow up’.
Documenting the carnage in a video on social media, a heartbroken Moll said: ‘That’s our garden on fire. £12,000 of renovations gone, in minutes.’
Describing how the fire rapidly grew out of control, she added: ‘We were sat at the table, having a drink on the evening as you do, and enjoying your life at home and as we were sat there chatting my partner went, “Can you smell that?”
‘I went, “yeah, I can smell gas”, then just as that happened it just started hissing, and the hissing got progressively louder, and louder and louder.
The moment the fire pit ignited, triggering a huge garden blaze
The inferno engulfed Molly’s back garden, with large flames ravaging the fences
‘As my partner said “f***ing move”… it went up in flames.’
Footage of the blaze’s aftermath shows Moll’s garden completely razed, with fences blackened and charred and the fire pit all but obliterated.
The devastation came shortly after Moll had finished a £12,000 makeover on the garden of her new-build home at the end of last year.
‘From the video you can’t see our full garden and how big it is, but altogether £12,000 is how much it’s cost,’ she added.
‘People don’t realise what it looked like before.
‘It’s a new-build garden with poor ground and the garden sloped down.
‘We literally started from scratch on it.’
The video, posted two days ago, went viral on TikTok, notching up almost four million views.
However, Moll claimed she was ruthlessly mocked by trolls over her back garden disaster.
Speaking in a second video, she said: ‘It’s just been a small amount [of people] that have just been a bunch of c***s.’
‘I received comments saying I never bothered to put the fire out, that I didn’t tell my neighbours to get out of the house, that I deserve what happened to me,’ she later told The Sun.
An example of the sort of fire pit that is similar to the one which burst into flames
The aftermath of the fire, which destroyed the garden’s £12,000 renovation work
‘Some comments as well saying I live in a council house which I don’t and saying the garden was never that much money and lots of people saying it’s an insurance job.
‘Just all the comments putting the blame on me and most of those comments all came from men.’
Moll and her partner are waiting for a decision from their insurance company about how to proceed.
Despite saying she ‘never had a problem’ with the firepit in the four years since she bought it, she is urging people not to get one.
‘I would never advise anyone to get one of those tables or even have a gas canister in the garden,’ she said.