€2,000 in electricity bills... two years after house fire

An elderly couple have received electricity bills of more than €2,000 even though their house in St Julian’s caught fire two years ago, destroying everything and making the place uninhabitable. They said electricity cables outside the house had even been cut off by Enemalta as a “security precaution” but the utility bills kept coming – the amount increasing each time. Early in the morning of September 2 in 2010, Marie Therese Borg Caruana, 67, woke up when the electric fan stopped working. She alerted her husband Alexander, now 83, who got out of bed and opened their bedroom door. Little did they know that a short circuit had set their lower floor on fire, and as soon as Mr Borg Caruana opened the door, a blanket of smoke swept across the room. The couple were trapped in the bedroom and had to escape through their balcony. Climbing down on to the window ledge on the lower floor, Ms Borg Caruana still remembers the moment when she was urged by neighbours below to let go and jump into their arms. “It was a terrible experience that shook us. That incident took a toll on our health,” she shudders. And the electricity bills they receive every couple of months remind them of that...