Fourteen months ago the Ross family was left homeless after an internal house fire, sparked by an electrical appliance, gutted their Wagga residence.

Unbeknown to Liza, the fire ripped through the home while she was in Sydney nursing her sister at St George Hospital.

Liza had selflessly given up her job as a nurse in Wagga to care for her beloved sister, who spent four months on life support.

“The fire actually happened a couple of days before I came back from Sydney,” she said.

“I have roller shutter on the garage door and the rest of the home was closed up so the fire burnt itself out when it ran out of oxygen.

“I arrived back in Wagga on the fifth of June last year and the fire had supposedly occurred on the second.

“If I had come home a couple of days earlier than the fire could have been fatal.

“My children and I would have been in the home.”

With no income and focus firmly on her sister’s health, Liza had been unable to keep up expensive insurance payments on the house.

“I wasn’t working and the insurance was one of the things I let slip,” she said.

“You never imagine something like this is going to happen.”

With two thirds of the home destroyed by the fire, and extensive smoke and soot damage throughout the residence, the house was uninhabitable.

Still coming to terms with her fathers death only months before and with her sister still battling serious illness in Sydney, the courageous mother of two admitted the house went to the bottom of the priority list.

“We started to rent and began building our life from there,” she said.

In the months following the fire, inspirational Liza endured a tough battle with post-traumatic stress disorder, which further prevented her from taking the first steps towards rebuilding her home.

It wasn’t until April this year that Liza was comfortable turning her attention back to the house.

“I started sending out letters to business in the community to see if there was anyone who would be able to help us, at the same time as I started the massive clean-up” she said.

“On June 4 Kate and Andrew Corcoran took over everything and in the last five or six weeks our home has been rebuilt.”

The pain, hardship and heartbreak of the past 18 months was forgotten on Saturday, as the Ross family excitedly moved back into their home.

“We have been through a very difficult time but we are finally starting a new life,” she said.

“We are back in our home and, after a long rehabilitation process, my sister is fully recovered.

“I have come to realise all things happen for a reason and I have fully come to terms with what has happened over the past 18 months.”