A mother who drank a bottle-and-a-half of wine on the night a house fire killed her four children has given conflicting accounts of how she managed to flee to safety.
Rachel Henson lost her children - nine-year-old Tommy, six-year-old Alisha, Rocco, four, and Appolonia, two - when a fire engulfed their home in Hulland Ward, Derbyshire, on 24 January.
Ms Henson, who on Wednesday attended the inquest into their deaths at Derby Coroner’s Court, South Derbyshire, admitted she had consumed a bottle-and-a-half of wine on the night of the tragedy, but said she was “not massively drunk”.
She told Coroner Robert Hunter: “I was tired and ready for bed rather than drunk.”
Ms Henson refused to comment when asked by reporters how she managed to get out of the house on January 24 – the night of the fire.
In her evidence to the inquest, she said she had been in Appolonia's upstairs bedroom with Tommy and managed to get the window open before falling through, without taking any of the children with her.
She said she landed uninjured in the back garden before running for help.
But evidence from Chris Smith, of Derbyshire Fire and Rescue Service, said forensic examinations of the house after the fire revealed that none of the windows had been opened.
Mr Hunter ruled that, had a fire guard been in place around the family's open fire and smoke detectors been functioning, their lives could have been saved, PA reported.
Tommy Henson, nine, Alisha Henson-Nulty, six, Appolonia Henson, two, and Rocco Henson-Nulty, four, all perished in the blaze
A tearful Ms Henson described the hearing as “very fair” and said: "There's some important points that we ought to deal with - smoke alarms and fire guards - and it's just been a very distressing time.
Commenting before he delivered his ruling, Mr Hunter said: "Ms Henson's description is graphic and believable but based on the evidence heard at the inquest, I'm not able to say with any degree of confidence, not even to the balance of probabilities, what were the means by which Ms Henson was able to leave the property."
Delivering a narrative verdict into each of the children's deaths, he added: "The absence of a fire guard and the removal of, and non-function of, a smoke detector were contributing factors in these deaths."
Mr Hunter said he was satisfied from evidence that the fire had been started by a damp log being put on smokeless coals on the fire, which burn at a very high temperature.
Evidence given to the inquest by a chimney engineer showed that the moisture content in the logs used by Ms Henson was over the usual acceptable level, which caused the water inside them to boil and the wood to split open.
Hot pieces of wood or embers were spat out and were the cause of the fire, Mr Hunter said.
If a fire guard had been in place they would never have come into contact with combustible materials.
Had working smoke alarms been in the house, Ms Henson and all four children would have had time to escape, he added.
Mr Hunter said he would be using his powers as coroner to write to the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister to raise concerns about logs being sold as "seasoned" when they were in fact too moist.
He said: "Larger suppliers of these logs do season their logs but smaller suppliers do not.
"I feel this is a Trading Standards issue as the public are being misled by dealers who pass off unseasoned logs as being seasoned."
Mr Hunter passed on his condolences to Ms Henson and her family, saying he could not imagine losing four children in such tragic circumstances, and added that he hoped the wider public would take notice of the issues raised during the inquest, especially around this time of year when tealights and Christmas lights are common in households.
The inquest, which lasted just over a day-and-a-half, heard that, following the blaze, Tommy and Appolonia were carried out of the house by firefighters but could not be saved and died later in hospital.
The bodies of Alisha and Rocco were later found inside the semi-detached house.
They all suffered serious burns and died from the effects of fire due to a house fire, post-mortem examinations found.
Ms Henson had only had the open fire for two or three weeks before the blaze and was trying to get hold of a fire guard but was having difficulty.
"It was one of my priority things to do," she said.
She also said she had disconnected two mains-operated smoke alarms when they started going off one evening a while before the fire and she had used a hammer to do so.
Since then she had simply forgotten to put them back together, she said.
She also said she could not remember why a battery-powered smoke alarm did not have a battery in it and that she did not take it out.
Ms Henson told the inquest that on the night of the fire she had put all the children to bed and was nodding off in bed herself when Tommy came in and said to her: "Mum, the house, it's filled with something" and the bedroom was filled with thick black smoke.
She said she picked up Tommy and tried to open the window in her bedroom but could not open it, so went into Appolonia's room.
She said she was sitting on the window ledge with Tommy, trying to get him out, when she fell through.
She said: "I was pushing and he was frightened and he was pushing his arms and legs against the outside of the window to not go through."
She went on: "The next thing I know I'm going through the air and I'm on the floor."
She went on: "I did not jump and leave him in there."
Mr Hunter asked if she was sure she did not jump from the window and read her part of a police statement she made just after the fire in which she said: "Thinking back, I know Appolonia was right next to me as I jumped out the window but I do not think I took her.
"I wasn't in that frame of mind."
She also told the inquest that her open fire had still been partially burning when she went to bed and she had no fire guard but had been trying to get hold of one.
Mr Hunter asked why she told press the fire had been dying out and she said: "I was probably embarrassed to say I'd left some coal there and a log on."
She went on: "I remember the fire was still alight with more of a fire than usual."
She said she was not "unduly concerned" about it at the time but now realises that she should have been.
Yesterday, on the first day of the inquest, neighbours told the coroner that Ms Henson did nothing while the fire took hold.
She was repeatedly asked if the children were in the house but would not answer, neighbour Anna Murphy told the hearing.
She also said Ms Henson appeared to be unsteady on her feet and smelled of alcohol.
Mr Hunter read from a statement Miss Murphy gave shortly after the fire, in which she said Ms Henson was slurring her words and stumbling.
She went on: "This made me think that Rachel had been drinking and there was a clear smell of alcohol around her - I could smell wine."
Miss Murphy said she thought some of Ms Henson's actions could be put down to shock - she was trembling and was uneasy - but not all of her behaviour.