Neighbour rescues dog while Wigan home is left uninhabitable by smoke from boiler blaze

Heat from the blazing appliance in the kitchen was so intense that the flames burned through the ceiling and melted the bath in the bathroom above.

Only the family dog – a French bulldog – was in the property at the time, but thankfully a quick-thinking neighbour smashed the rear dining room window to rescue it.

Two fire crews from Wigan and one from Hindley were called to the semi-detached home in Foster Avenue, Ince, at 12.55pm on Saturday August 5 after reports that it was alight.

The owner – a woman in her late 30s – had just nipped out with her two primary school-aged children when the boiler burst into flames.

She had known there had been a fault with it and was waiting for someone to come to repair it when disaster struck.

Hindley watch manager Kieran Reid said: “The moral of this story is that when you go to bed or leave a house unattended, you should always shut the internal doors.

"As it was in this house, all the doors were open and smoke was everywhere and it caused a lot of damage to the point that no-one can live in it at the moment.”

Six firefighters using breathing apparatus tackled the incident using three hose reels, then deployed a positive pressure fan to ventilate the smoke-logged house.

They were at the scene for a little over two hours.

Mr Reid said that it was pure coincidence that the woman was out at the time.

The boiler catching light of course might have endangered the occupants’ safety but, on the other hand, the mum could then have closed the kitchen door and avoided a lot of the damage to the rest of the house.