UK - A COUPLE'S dog and a smoke alarm helped save lives in a house blaze.
Pensioners Barbara and Maurice Smith were asleep when a fire took hold in their neighbour's semidetached house at 2am yesterday (Monday, 01 May).
Mr Smith, 71, heard the sound of the alarm and at first thought someone was trying to break into a car.
But when he looked out of his front window he could see nothing amiss.
Then his 12-year-old Yorkshire Terrier - Gypsy - began pestering him to let her outside.
He got up to take her outside and it was only when he was in the back garden that he saw his neighbour's property, in Home Close, Histon, engulfed in flames - and fire leaping across the roof to his own house.
He was immediately concerned for his elderly and disabled neighbour, Malcolm Hudson, who was trapped inside his house, so Mr Smith rang 999.
Shortly afterwards, another neighbour, who had heard a smoke alarm going off inside the blazing house, ran to help Mr Hudson, who has mobility problems, to escape with his two dogs.
Mr Smith said: "Our dog certainly saved our lives and stopped the situation from getting far worse.
"The flames were coming right through onto our roof.
"I was very concerned."
Mrs Smith, 68, said: "I couldn't believe it when I saw the fire.
"There was a terrible smell.
"Nobody knows how it happened
* but they think it might have been an electrical item left on.
"All our electrics went off and half our porch is missing."
A spokeswoman for Cambridgeshire Fire and Rescue, which sent crews from Cambridge and Cottenham, said a smoke alarm, fitted by firefighters, had helped to save Mr Hudson's life.
She said: "Had a smoke alarm not been fitted it is not clear whether the gentleman would have been saved from the property."
Nobody was injured in the incident.
http://www.cambridge-news.co.uk/news...2697d5d4cc.lpf