A man in Maidenhead rescued his neighbour from a burning building after finding her lying on the floor of her own home.
On Monday afternoon, a fire broke out at Hungerford Drive. Mike Turner lives nearby in Abingdon Walk and spotted that something was wrong.
“I could see this smoke coming out of [the home] which I thought was from a boiler flue,” he said. “I thought, ‘That’s letting a lot of smoke out’.”
He then saw a door at the back slightly ajar, and smoke drifting out from there too.
Mike decided to check and looked through the open door. He saw that the kitchen cooker was on fire and the extraction fan hood was engulfed in flames.
“There was a load of smoke billowing out of the window,” Mike recalled.
Then someone called ‘help me’ from another room. Mike entered the front room and found an elderly woman lying on the floor.
The floor was flooded with water where the flames had scorched the ceiling, heating the pipes above and causing them to burst.
“I didn’t know what to do [about] putting [the fire] out,” said Mike. “If it’s electrical, the last thing you’re going to do is put water on it.”
Instead, Mike focused his attention on just getting the woman out of the house. There was a walking frame nearby.
“I knew she wouldn’t be able to get out [without help],” he said. “I took her under her armpits and pulled her out onto the lawn. Your adrenaline takes over and you think, ‘Is this really happening?’
“It might have been risky, but she was on the floor and calling for help – I’m wasn't going to not get her out.
“I’ve never been in a situation like that – it was quite frightening for me, I can’t imagine how she felt. I just wanted to get [us] out of there.”
Someone else had called the fire brigade by this point and Mike could hear the fire engines coming in the distance.
Once safe outside, the woman told Mike her two small dogs were inside and asked for help saving them too, which he did. They were sitting ‘frightened’ on the sofa when he came back inside.
After he quickly fetched up the dogs, one of them took off scared and Mike went off after it. When he returned, he said, emergency services were there.
The woman’s husband has also returned home by this time, having been alerted to the fire by his wife via phone.
“She and her husband couldn’t thank me enough,” said Mike.
The kitchen was left ‘wrecked’ by the fire, he added.
After the fire service arrived, they gave emergency care to the woman with the assistance of the police. She was then placed in the care of South Central Ambulance Service.
Crews from Maidenhead and Slough fire stations, alongside two officers (dispatched for more serious or complex incidents) and one crew from Buckinghamshire Fire and Rescue Service, tackled the fire.
Equipped with breathing apparatus, they used one hose reel to put out the blaze. Crews also used a ventilation fan to clear the smoke from the property.
They were on scene for about an hour and 10 minutes.
