Builders heated our flooded house to 50C and boiled our goldfish to death – our daughter, 10, is heartbroken
BUILDERS drying a family’s flooded house heated it to 50C and accidentally boiled their five goldfish.
Emmaline Green, 46, asked the specialist team to move the pets including her daughter Beatrix’s beloved Mr Big Fish.
Instead they put the fish in a bedroom before switching on eight humidifiers.
A few days later horrified Emmaline, a GP, and her partner, veteran soldier Hadrian Holland, 33, found the pets lifeless in their aquarium.
They broke the news to ten-year-old Beatrix who was so upset she refused to go back in the home.
Mum-of-three Emmaline fumed: “We found the fish just floating in their tank. They didn’t stand a chance.”
The other dead pets were Good, Bad and Ugly and Darth Vader.
Emmaline added: “The one that broke my daughter’s heart was Mr Big Fish. He wasn’t just a fish to her, he was a friend.
“We had him for six years after she won him at a fairground. I sat her down and told her in the garden and she just wept and wept.
“I’ll never forgive them for that, and for how they’ve treated us during this incredibly difficult time. My daughter can’t even talk about it.”
The flood broke out at the family’s £385,000 four-bed home in Thetford, Norfolk, on May 23 after a toilet depressor remained stuck in the down position overnight.
Most read in The Sun
Next day insurers Royal Sun Alliance commissioned a clear-up firm to sort the damage.
The family left instructions to move the fish to the carport before the house was dried out with industrial heaters.
Instead the cleaners put the pets upstairs and switched on the humidifiers.
On May 31 Emmaline reported to the insurance company the house was too hot. On June 3 they found the dead fish.
Emmaline claims the heat broke their TV, turned candles to liquid, and warped furniture and doors.
The family are staying in a caravan while the house is repaired and say the ordeal has cost them £7,000.
Read More on The Sun
Royal Sun Alliance apologised and said it had offered compensation for the disruption.
It said it would look to learn from the “complex case”.