Two rescued from midnight blaze

Working in zero visibility they fought their way upstairs where they fitted the man with a special compressed-air emergency breathing pack before carrying him over broken glass to safety.

Fire broke out in the lounge of the four-bedroomed detached house in Birkdale shortly before midnight on Saturday, January 5.

Mrs Augusta Russell was taken by ambulance to the Conquest Hospital, Hastings, suffering the effects of smoke inhalation. She was discharged on Sunday.

Her rescued adult son Andy did not go to hospital.

One fire appliance was only a few hundred yards away dealing with the after-effects of a firework attack on a telephone kiosk in Collington Rise. The crew was on the scene in moments.