Family of girl, two, who died in holiday caravan blaze are left furious after coroner cannot rule fire was sparked by boiler with a gas safety certificate that was months out of date
- Louisiana Brooke Dolan died of smoke inhalation on final day of family getaway
- Her mother Natasha Broadley was able to escape with her three eldest children
- Coroner Lindsay Tasker could not rule for certain the boiler caused the fatal fire
A toddler perished in a holiday caravan fire which started from a cupboard housing a boiler with a gas safety certificate which was months out of date, an inquest heard yesterday.
Louisiana Brooke Dolan died of smoke inhalation on the last day of the family getaway after a blaze broke out while her mother was in the shower.
Natasha Broadley was able to escape the static caravan with her three eldest children, but couldn’t reach two-year-old Louisiana, the court was told.
Coroner Lindsay Tasker said she could not rule for certain that the boiler caused the fatal fire in Sealands Caravan Park at Ingoldmells, Lincolnshire, in August 2021.
‘The evidence just isn’t there to establish the cause of the fire’, she said. Addressing Miss Broadley directly, she added: ‘I am sorry, for you, I have not been able to give you that answer’.
Louisiana Brooke Dolan (pictured) died of smoke inhalation on the last day of the family getaway after a blaze broke out while her mother was in the shower
The coroner could not rule that the fire in the caravan (pictured after) was sparked by a boiler with a gas safety certificate that was months out of date
Tearfully, Miss Broadley said: ‘I can’t spend the rest of my life not knowing…I won’t give up’.
Concluding the Lincoln hearing into Louisiana’s death, Miss Tasker said Louisiana died in a ‘tragic accident’.
The court heard that earlier on the day of the fire, Miss Broadley had called the owner of the caravan to check the boiler regarding her concerns over it. The court heard the ignition button didn’t work and the boiler had to be lit with a long lighter.
The owner’s son attended and was passed the long lighter – which was in the kitchen – by one of the children. It was shortly after he left that Miss Broadley, from Clipstone Village, Nottinghamshire, smelled smoke while showering.
During the hearing, Miss Broadley, 35, expressed her anger that the boiler – which should have had its safety certificate renewed five months earlier – wasn’t being explicitly blamed for causing the blame.
Karl Foxall, a station manager at Lincolnshire Fire and Rescue was asked to clarify where the fire started from.
‘It definitely started in the cupboard but what we can’t categorically say that it was from the boiler’, he replied.
Natasha Broadley (pictured at Louisiana’s funeral in September 2021) was able to escape the static caravan with her three eldest children, but couldn’t reach two-year-old Louisiana, the court was told
Miss Broadley said that she would not give up on finding out what caused the fatal fire at the Sealands Caravan Park in Ingoldmells, near Skegness
Concluding the Lincoln hearing into Louisiana’s death, Miss Tasker said Louisiana died in a ‘tragic accident’. Pictured: Family at Louisiana’s funeral
Louisiana’s grandmother Donna Broadley said the toddler enjoyed being with her family and ‘loved the attention’ of being the youngest
Detective Chief Inspector Jo Fortune, the senior investigating officer for Lincolnshire Police, said: ‘There was no deliberate ignition’.
She added: ‘The gas safety certificate was out of date by five months’.
Police made enquiries with the Crown Prosecution Service about the possibility of charging the caravan owner with manslaughter by gross negligence.
But DCI Fortune told the court: ‘The difficulty is we can’t get that element of whether there was a fault in the boiler that [the caravan owner] should have known about and got fixed’.
A statement from Louisiana’s grandmother Donna Broadley was also read out at the inquest.
She said the toddler enjoyed being with her family and ‘loved the attention’ of being the youngest. On the day of the fire, when Louisiana was on holiday with her siblings and mum, she had sausage and chips and spent the day ‘doing what she loved…That was being with her mum, brothers and sister’.
At the time of the fire, holidaymakers reported hearing a woman screaming and saw flames ‘leaping several feet above the roof of the caravan’.
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