QUICK-thinking neighbours saved an elderly couple after arsonists struck at their Whitefield home.

Mr Thomas Smith (73) and his 71-year-old wife, Marion, of Tintern Avenue, had a lucky escape after a husband-and-wife team from next door tackled the blaze early yesterday on Monday morning (June 21).

The drama happened as Mr Graham Jones was leaving for work at 4.50am and spotted flames coming from Mr and Mrs Smith's outside bin store. The blaze rapidly spread to the property's porch.

Mr Jones alerted the firebrigade and set about dousing the flames with a hosepipe while his wife, Marie, smashed the porch window to stop it exploding in the heat and alerted the couple asleep upstairs. She said: "My husband is a lorry driver and he gets up early in the morning. He was leaving for work and as he came out he noticed that the entrance next door was on fire."

"He got the hosepipe out of the garage and I went round the back to try to wake up the couple. By the time the firebrigade came it was still going but my husband had doused the flames. If we had been away these people would have been dead."

Mrs Smith was trying to get out of the smoke-logged home when firefighters wearing breathing apparatus broke down the door. Her husband was upstairs and had to be led to safety. Both were unhurt but suffered shock.

The cause of the blaze is being treated as arson. Just minutes later a nearby post box was also torched.

Mr Smith thanked his neighbours for their quick actions.

He said: "If the guy next door had had a nine-to-five job we would have been dead as we sleep very well. We think the smoke would have got to us before anything else. It was just lucky that he was going out." His wife added: "I cannot believe it as we have lived here for 23 years and there has been no trouble."

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