A COUPLE are in hospital after escaping from their blazing home at Warrington during the night.
The fire devasted the detached house in Shackleton Close, Westbrook with the ground floor wrecked by fire and the first floor badly damaged by heat and smoke.
The couple, in their fifties, were asleep in bed but managed to escape after being awoken by the smell of smoke. Firefighters managed to rescue a dog from the smokefilled house.
The couple were taken to Warrington Hospital suffering from smoke inhalation.
Firefighters wearing breathing apparatus used two hosereels to fight the blaze and a ventilation unit to clear smoke from the house. But the property was left uninhabitable.
A firefighter said smoke detectors were fitted in the house but it was not clear if they had activated. The couple did not hear them.
“By the time we got there they had melted off the ceiling,” he said.
The cause is believed to have been an electrical fault.
