Catherine Siegers was not sure why her smoke alarm was going off when she was woken about 1.45am on September 1, 2017. What the 81-year-old woman could not know at that time was that someone had deliberately set fire to her Wangaratta home.
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The person accused of putting her life at risk is Lisa Hay, 35, who lived next-door and had been lighting smaller fires at another neighbour's house on Burke Street over the previous two months.
Hay appeared in Wodonga County Court on Thursday for the first day of her trial, facing charges of arson and reckless conduct endangering life.
Ms Siegers was brought to tears while giving evidence, as she looked at photos of her home that had been destroyed by the fire.
She told that court that before she was woken properly by her smoke alarm, she heard two small bangs at her back door, running on her wooden deck, then another noise at the fence that sounded like Hay's dog Buddy.
When the alarm sounded, she got up to investigate.
"I could see pinky light coming through the glass panel at the top of the door and then I heard this sound, it was like just crackling," Ms Siegers said.
"Then smoke started to roll through cracks of the door."
She grabbed a dressing down to put over the top of her nightie and got out of the house.
"It was a lot of smoke and it was affecting my breathing," she said.
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Crown prosecutor David O'Doherty told the jury of seven women and five men that the fire caused about $200,000 in damage to the three-bedroom house and it was later demolished.
He alleged Hay jumped her back fence into Ms Siegers' property to start the fire.
"The accused used some methods that were available to her, probably cardboard or something, to set a fire at the back door of the premise," he said.
"It was forensically determined that the fire was deliberately lit using a lighted match or a cigarette lighter."
CCTV cameras had been set up at the time, pointing at Hay's and her neighbour's home over the other side.
In December 2018, Hay pleaded guilty to lighting four fires at that house between April and July 2017.
Mr O'Doherty said she then allegedly turned her attention to Ms Siegers' home.
He said the prosecution would rely on coincidence evidence, arguing it was likely Hay also lit the more serious fire in September.
"It makes it more likely that the charged acts occurred, rather than the defence hypothesis that some other person lit the fires," she said.
Defence barrister Martin Kozlowski said Hay denied committing the arson and he would challenge the argument that her guilty plea over the other fires meant she committed this one.
The trial continues on Friday.
