A MOTHER and her three children have been left homeless by a horror fire - just weeks before Christmas.

But Debbie O'Connor and her family, of New Lane, Oswaldtwistle, were lucky to escape without injury when the fire started in a storage area under the stairs, burning a hole through the middle of their house.

The flames and thick black smoke spread so quickly through the house it is expected be at least three months before they will be able to move back in.

Debbie, 41, a student at Blackburn College, and her children are now staying with friends.

The fire left a gaping hole in their staircase, ruined carpets in many rooms and left a thick black coating on walls, kitchen appliances and framed family photographs.

The ceilings in the kitchen and living room are also on the verge of collapse.

But Debbie, who has 15 and 16-year-old sons, Shaun and Dale, and a seven-year-old daughter, Melissa, said it could have been much worse if the fire, which started at 3.30pm on Saturday, had occurred at night when they were in bed or while the house was empty.

She said: "It happened so quick. My daughter, her friend and I were upstairs and my two sons were watching football. I heard a big bang and my son came to the bottom of the stairs and said there was a fire under the stairs.

"I grabbed my little girl and her friend and ran downstairs and outside. There were flames under the stairs and the smoke was billowing out of the back of the house.

"The windows blew out at the back because of the heat and the kitchen is a total disaster. You can see right up to the loft from the stairs. It's like a nightmare, we're homeless now. It's just a good job it happened during the day when we were in and could call the fire brigade otherwise who knows what could have happened?"

Firefighters who attended the incident said the problem had been made worse because of a large collection of highly flammable video cassettes being stored near where the fire started.

The fire also affected three houses either side of Debbie's as the smoke spread along the block.

Next-door neighbour Ann Walmsley said: "Everything is coated in a layer of black even inside my kitchen cupboards and you can smell the smoke as soon as you walk in the house. We have been lucky though because if it had been nighttime we might all have been dead.

"If it hadn't been caught when it was my house could have gone up in smoke too. The firefighters rescued my cat who had gone under my stairs where the smoke was worst and Shaun, one of Debbie's sons, managed to get their dog out of the house.

"At least no-one was hurt."

When she was allowed back inside the house, Debbie discovered her cat was fine and curled up on the front bedroom windowsill. The family's two goldfish were also unharmed.