Fire terror for grandmother in Cirencester (From Wilts and Gloucestershire Standard)

Fire terror for grandmother in Cirencester

5:00pm Monday 29th October 2012 in News By Laura Shack

A GRANDMOTHER had to be rescued from her Cirencester home after she woke up to find her bedroom filled with smoke.

Muriel Savory was pulled to safety from her Chesterton home along with her German shepherd dog Lady and two pet cats after a fire broke out in her kitchen in the early hours of Friday, October 19.

The 45-year-old said that although her smoke alarm went off she slept through it and woke up choking on the fumes, which had come from a frying pan she had accidentally left on the evening before.

"I thought I’d turned the cooker off. I took sleeping pills and went to bed and the next thing I knew I was coughing and there was smoke everywhere," she said.

Realising she was trapped in her bedroom, Muriel called emergency services and within minutes fire crews had rushed from Cirencester and Tetbury stations to her Drift Way home, along with paramedics and police.

She said: "I kept saying please rescue my pets because they were downstairs and I couldn’t get to them."

The animals were unharmed in the fire and after a check-up at Cirencester Hospital, Muriel was allowed home.

Now she said she is too scared to sleep and is just grateful that her one-year-old grandson Liam, who spends two nights a week at her house was not there.

"If I hadn’t woken up, I wouldn’t be here today," she said. "And it doesn’t bear thinking about what could have happened if my grandson was here that night."