Heidi and her family will be spending Christmas at the hotel because their home in Leverstock Green is so badly damaged, it needs major restructuring work. They've got five bedrooms at the hotel, but no kitchen, or living area where they can all gather as a family. Heidi, says the effect on them all as a family unit has been incalculable. She says living in a hotel is听very different for her two toddlers.
 | | The cramped kitchen area |
"It's very geographically restricting because they can't run around in the same way as at home. The biggest thing that we've noticed is that they don't have the same family inter-action because their siblings are in other rooms.听 At home we all sit around table and have dinner and we all do the whole family thing, we can't do that here" said Heidi. As a mum of seven,听 Heidi says she enjoys cooking meals for the family and spending time in the kitchen..听 now all she has is a microwave, a fridge, one shelf and no work surfaces. Even little things, like getting football kit washed in time for the next match can be very difficult. With no washing machine she relies on the laundry service in the hotel, which can't always turn washing around overnight.. "When you run out of uniform you can't just stick it in the washing machine and have it for the next day.. PE kits have proved to be a huge issue because they often need to be turned around for the next day." As a result,听 Heidi says she often have to buy extra kit. The family feel they've been forgotten and abandoned by everyone, including Hertfordshire Oil Storage Limited, which ran the site for Texaco and Total.
 | | The hotel room - home for the Brazier family. |
"No amount of money will quantify what's gone on for our family in the past year. They cannot give us back the time we have lost in our lives, they cannot give us back our son's first birthday and first steps that he could have in his own home, they cannot give us back our psychological and emotional well being and they cannot give back the time period in our eldest childrens' lives while taking their exams." Heidi would like to see an interim compensation fund set up for families who've been affected by the disaster and also feels that some money now would help them meet immediate expenses and ease the financial hardship. | 
