People left in limbo after fire rips through Storage King facility in Burpengary, north of Brisbane
A large fire at a storage facility north of Brisbane has left many in limbo, unsure if their belongings have been spared.
Emergency services were called to the Storage King complex on Old Gympie Road in Burpengary just after 6pm on Wednesday night.
It took 26 crews three and a half hours to contain the blaze, and prompted police to declare an exclusion zone, with residents urged to stay inside due to heavy smoke.
Irene Schynol said everything she owned was being kept at the facility after being homeless for four years.
She is close to finding somewhere to live, but is now unsure whether she will have anything to fill her home with.
"I found out there was a fire here last night, I was horrified," she said.
"There's a lot of personal stuff in there, papers, photos of my adopted daughter who passed away, [and] family photos.
An exclusion zone, which encompassed New Settlement Road, Pitt Road, Bellini Road, Twists Road, and Old Bay Road, was retracted just after 2am.
Two people were assessed for smoke inhalation, with one person taken to Caboolture Hospital in a stable condition.
It's unclear what started the fire, but police are not currently treating it as suspicious.
Kerry Tomsen said she had "absolutely everything" in the facility, including photos of her children and other sentimental items.
"I only saw [the fire] on Facebook and came down to see for myself," she said.
"There's a lot of families who have got stuff in here, you know, it's everything."
Ms Tomsen was told her stuff "may be okay".
"I'm just hoping that it is, and I feel for everyone who has lost their stuff," she said through tears.
Hashtags

Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles

ABC News
14 minutes ago
- ABC News
Lawyer X Nicola Gobbo loses compensation claim for damages suffered after informing on her clients
Disgraced former barrister Nicola Gobbo's compensation claim for physical and mental damage caused by her time as a police informer has been thrown out. Victorian Supreme Court judge Melinda Richards dismissed Ms Gobbo's lawsuit against the State of Victoria on Friday morning, finding that she was barred from bringing it due to an earlier settlement with police in 2010. Ms Gobbo sued the state, which is responsible for the actions of police, in 2021 but the court suppressed details of her claim until July 2023. In court papers, she accused Victoria Police of negligence and "high-handed, insulting or reprehensible conduct" in inducing her to become a police informer, resulting in damage to her physical and mental health. She said that when Victoria Police approached her to become an informant, she "expressed grave concerns for her safety" due to her connections with the underworld, "including risk of death" if confidential information was released. Ms Gobbo claimed that she only agreed to become an informer after police officers including former commissioner Simon Overland assured her that her identity would remain confidential. However, she alleged that the officers "knew or ought to have known that they could not protect" her from being exposed. Ms Gobbo's career as a police informer against the interests of her clients resulted in a royal commission and the release of two of them from prison after their convictions were set aside. Her identity was publicly exposed in 2018 and since then she and her two children have lived in various places overseas. In its defence, the state said Ms Gobbo knew the risks when she became an informer and denied the officers owed her a duty to take reasonable care to avoid her suffering foreseeable injury. On Friday morning, Justice Richards said that only four of the officers — including Mr Overland — owed Ms Gobbo a duty of care. But Justice Richards said the officers did not breach their duty of care to Ms Gobbo. She said she would have found against Ms Gobbo even if the lawsuit was not barred due to the settlement deal struck in 2010. This was because Ms Gobbo voluntarily assumed the risk of becoming a police informer. This meant the state "could not have been held liable ... due to the materialisation of that risk". "The proceeding must be dismissed." Justice Richards delayed publication of her full 200-page judgment until this afternoon to give the parties time to check whether any part of it should be suppressed.

ABC News
43 minutes ago
- ABC News
News Breakfast: 'A lot of uncertainty': David Speers on the fate of Australia-US relations
ABC iview Home Watch all your favourite ABC programs on ABC iview. More from ABC We acknowledge Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as the First Australians and Traditional Custodians of the lands where we live, learn and work.

News.com.au
an hour ago
- News.com.au
Search for missing teen Pheobe Bishop suspended after haunting last posts emerge
The search for missing teenager Pheobe Bishop in Good Night Scrub National Park has been suspended after five days. The teen was last seen on May 15, travelling towards Bundaberg airport, however, she failed to board the plane and has not been seen since. Police begam their seach of the national park on May 23, and expanded the operation after they found evidence may have been moved from the Good Night Scrub area prior to their arrival. Some items of interest have been located during the search and will undergo forensic examination. Police said on Wednesday the investigation was 'ongoing' and that 'police are continuing to run out several lines of enquiry'. 'In addition to investigative work, physical searches will continue as needed and as information is provided,' a spokesman said. 'The greater Gin Gin area remains the focus of the investigation.' More to come. Haunting last posts emerge Pheobe's tragic final posts emerged this week, revealing she had decided to not return to her family home. A post on missing Gin Gin teenager Pheobe Bishop's TikTok has given insight into the 17-year-old's outlook on life before she disappeared. In a post timestamped March 31 – just two weeks before the teenager mysteriously vanished – Pheobe revealed that she had been 'in and out' of home for years, but 'this time we're not going back'. Pheobe was living with two housemates at a property in Gin Gin before her disappearance. Her post was part of a wider trend dubbed 'coffee with my younger self', where people shared a hypothetical conversation between their current and younger self to demonstrate personal growth and development. In the post, she references that she had an estranged relationship with her mother, writing that 'we don't see nor talk to her but it's better like this'. She wrote that she was a proud sibling and aunty but felt she had to leave home to prioritise herself. 'Baby we will always need them, but we need to find us more then (sic) anything or anyone,' she wrote The long text concludes with the line, 'I really hope I meet my younger self for coffee again soon', while Adele's Hometown Glory plays in the background. The post has been flooded with comments from concerned friends and followers, with many writing that they are praying that Pheobe returns home safe. The account also shows that Pheobe recently reposted a video published by a different user captioned 'my roman empire is how people who go 'missing' are still somewhere here on this earth, and just no one knows where'. Pheobe spoke candidly about her experiences and challenges on her TikTok account, including alluding to a break-up. Police said the teen had been booked to travel to Western Australia via Brisbane to visit her boyfriend, but she never checked in for the flight. She posted a video to the song The Man Who Can't Be Moved by The Script in December 2024, captioned 'i miss seeing ur face, and i miss seeing you in random places'. 'I'm not built for this town, these aren't my people. So b4 [before] you try n get close to me jus (sic) don't. I refuse to rot,' she wrote in a separate post on March 25. In another TikTok, she wrote 'life teaching me a lot right now'. Mum's tragic plea to Pheobe Pheobe's mother Kylie Johnson wrote in a Facebook post on Tuesday that the family was waiting for her daughter to come home. 'Finding it hard to get out of bed today. To find the strength to put one foot in front of the other and know what to do, what to think or what to say,' she wrote. 'People have judgements, accusations and continue say untruths. I'm not going to correct you or be investing what little strength I have to be correcting these statements or people. 'We as a family are just trying to go through the motions of waiting for Phee to come home.'