- Penelope was woken up from her sleep to the sound of explosions outside her house.
- Security cameras showed that her carport was on fire along with her car.
- When she rushed to put the fire out, Penelope herself was set alight sizzling the skin on 25 per cent of her body.
Here Penelope Travers, 40, Greenfields, WA, tells her story in her own words.
Time for bed darling. Put your gaming away,’ I said, kissing my girl, Octavia, 16, goodnight.
Then, I checked in on my sleeping son, Quinn, seven, before I tucked myself into bed and dozed off later that night.
Bang!
Jerking awake, my eyes widened in the dark as I heard an explosion.
Glancing at my phone, I saw it was 4.30am, on October 6, 2025.
I’d set up security cameras outside – at the front of the house and at the carport – so checking the app on my phone, I was horrified to see my carport and ute were on fire.
I raced to the carport to find the shelves, which were crammed with tools and car essentials, were ablaze, as was the front of my ute – a Toyota HiLux.
I have to stop it spreading to the house, I fretted. My babies are inside.
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After sprinting back inside, I ran into the carport and tried to douse the flames with jugfuls of water to no avail. Just then, two large cans of spray paint caught fire, exploding in my face with a boom as I became a human fireball.
Shrieking in pain, I shut my eyes tight as the skin on my face, chest and arms sizzled as I breathed in the toxic fumes. The scent of my singed blonde hair filled my nostrils, and it felt like I was being flash-fried alive like a steak in a searing hot pan.
My cries pierced the quiet night and I ran out to the front yard to seek help. Realising my fluffy polyester PJ pants were on fire, I ripped them off, worried they’d melt onto my skin, as my neighbour Mark ran to my aid.
While he dialled emergency services, I remembered the hose at the front of the house. Running to attach it to the tap, I noticed the skin on my fingers was hanging off in ribbons.
While Mark then hosed the blaze, I ran inside to my bathroom and bit my tongue through the pain as freezing water slammed into my red raw skin.
Waking up, my frightened kids found me in the shower.
‘I’ll be okay, there’s just been an accident in the garage. Stay inside,’ I stressed to them.
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When the ambos arrived I was still in the shower. As we got outside, I saw the smouldering remains of the carport and my smoking ute. Fireys were everywhere.
Once in the back of the ambulance, I was pumped with meds and raced to emergency. Over the next week in hospital, I slipped in and out of awareness.
A week after the fire, and finally alert, I realised I could only see a strip of the hospital room in front of me, as I peeked through a tiny fold between thick bandages that wrapped me from head to toe.
My first thought was my complete and utter worry for my kids. Were they okay?
‘I look like a mummy!’ I gasped in terror as the nurse held up a mirror to my face.
Medical staff told me I’d undergone a four and a half hour skin graft surgery.
‘You suffered severe burns to 25 per cent of your body and we had to use skin from your entire left thigh to treat the burns on your arms, foot and waist,’ a doctor explained, adding they had to use spray on skin cells for the burns on my face, neck and chest.
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As the nurse was changing my dressings, I noticed a tattoo – an umbrella with raindrops – that had been on my thigh was now on my right arm, and a birthmark from my inner thigh had shifted to my left arm.
‘I look like a bit of a patchwork,’ I joked, while trying to push through the agony. But there was more bad news to come…
Speaking to Octavia on the phone, I learned that while Quinn was staying with a friend, she’d been minding our house while our kind neighbours checked in on her.
Something scary had happened the day before I’d woken up.
‘I was sleeping, Mum, and then the dog started barking so loud…when I came out your ute was on fire again,’ she cried to me.
‘I ran next door to Mark, and he helped put out the fire and we reported it to the police.’
The ute’s front had been seriously damaged in the first incident. Now the entire vehicle was totalled.
My mind whirred. Two fires in less than a week?
My baby could’ve been killed, I panicked.
As a single mum, I felt so helpless that I wasn’t there to protect her. Calling my dad, Lindsay, who lived in Tassie, I asked him to come and look after the kids.
After a few days, police came to my hospital room. ‘We’re treating both fires as suspicious,’ an officer said, explaining that the assailant had tried to launch a firebomb into my ute window, but it had bounced off and set my carport on fire.
READ MORE: Camping horror – I woke up with my face on fire
‘When they returned on October 12, they threw an accelerant into the ute and lit it on fire,’ the officer added.
While my security camera managed to capture the perpetrator on video, the footage was blurry and their face was covered with a hoodie.
Who the hell would do this?! I fumed, terrified that the cruel perpetrator was still at large.
After 17 gruelling days in hospital, my wounds had healed enough for me to be discharged.
‘Mummy you’re home!’ my kids screamed.
I was overcome with joy, but my concerns grew when the kids started to ask about the attack.
‘A bad person threw a firebomb at our house,’ I explained.
‘You should have woken me up, so I could have protected you,’ Quinn said bravely, as I burst into tears.
Four months on, still in pain, I’ve only been able to go back to my job as a disability support worker part-time, and I can’t sleep without fearing for our lives and home.
I’ll need to keep wearing compression sleeves for a year, and need three rounds of laser treatment to treat major scarring on my left arm.
I started a GoFundMe to help me cover my bills and feed the kids. Amazingly, generous strangers donated more than $10,500 to help.
But with no idea when I’ll be able to go back to work full-time, I’m swallowing my pride to ask for help again.
My kids are my life and I’ll do anything to keep them safe
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