QUICK thinking neighbours helped to rescue a man from a blazing house on Sunday afternoon (July 25).

Thirty-one-year-old Paul Dooley was trapped in an upstairs bedroom as flames leapt out of his living room windows in Daventry Avenue, Bispham, at 5pm.

Tony Shepherd, a window installer who lives opposite, said: "I was just going out to my van when I heard this explosion like a brick going through a car windscreen. I looked across and saw the house on fire and smoke billowing out.

"The bloke was trying to get out of the upstairs window and he looked to be in serious trouble."

Mr Shepherd, his cousin Ray Nimmo who was visiting, and neighbour Wayne Hampson grabbed ladders from the van and rushed across: "By this time he'd got out on to the windowsill and was trying to climb down," said Mr Shepherd. "As he dropped, my cousin and Wayne grabbed him and got him away just before another window exploded.

"Then the fire brigade arrived and gave him oxygen till the ambulance came. He was lucky to be alive."

Mr Dooley, whose wife and two children were out at the time, was discharged from hospital after treatment, but Mr Shepherd said a neighbour's child, suffering from a heart defect, also had to be taken to hospital for checks after smoke inhalation.

Leading firefighter John Oates said Mr Dooley had been trapped by smoke from the living room.

"The prompt actions of the neighbours helped save this man from serious injury," said Mr Oates. "But we advise people, if they are going to sleep, to always shut room doors to prevent smoke getting out in the case of fire."

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