Plea to check smoke alarms after Bishop's Castle fire escape
A landlord has urged people to check their smoke alarms after a family renting one of his houses escaped a late-night blaze.
Six fire engines from across the county were sent to the fire near Bishop's Castle in the early hours of Monday morning after emergency services were called just after 12.15am.
Two parents and their young child were inside, but managed to evacuate safely before the fire spread.
A room on the first floor and part of the roof were caught up in the fire at a two-storey house in The Home, a small group of houses just north of the A489.
Nobody was hurt, but the property sustained significant damage including a hole in the roof. The house has been taped off by fire crews.
Landlord Phillip Rogers-Coltman praised the fire service, and insisted people need to make sure they check their smoke alarms.
He said: "They were in the house when it all went up, but they had working smoke alarms so they all got out. It was burning from around midnight to about three or four in the morning.
"The firefighters, give them their credit, they got here quickly and were excellent. But the smoke alarms did better.
"If anything comes from this, then it's that people should always make sure they have smoke alarms and make sure they check them.
"The family are okay. We've been able to put them up in one of our holiday lets, which was empty."
The cause of the fire is now being investigated.
Rabinder Dhami, fire prevention manager for Shropshire Fire and Rescue, said: “We are finding that certainly 90 per cent plus of house fires we attend have a working smoke alarm in place.
“The concern we have is that a person can become complacent.
“People might have the alarms in their homes but they might not test them.
“You do need to test them to make sure they are working.
“Most of the smoke alarms you buy now are sealed and have a battery life of five to ten years, so the problem of people not changing the batteries isn’t so much the problem.
“But they can fail and the batteries can wear down if the alarm is going off regularly because of cooking and that kind of thing.
“If you haven’t got a smoke alarm, get one. And if you have one, test it, because in this case it made all the difference.”
