DISASTER was narrowly avoided at a Malmesbury couple's home when a live power cable snapped and caused a fire in their kitchen.

Just after midnight on Sunday, Robert and Jackie Peel were woken by a sharp light and a terrifying sound from the downstairs of their home in Burnivale.

“We saw these sparks through the night blinds and we thought it was coming from outside,” explained 55-year-old Mrs Peel.

The pair ran downstairs to hear a horrible screeching sound coming from their metal stove, which had a flue reaching up to the roof.

“There was a glow in the pipe like a fire starting and on top of it was a spider plant and some metal frog ornaments.

"I went to take them off and the whole thing just went ‘whoomph’ and the spider plant went flying off,” Mrs Peel added.

Mr Peel, also 55, said his wife was thrown across the kitchen by the blast, and the pair quickly ran outside in their pyjamas to call the fire brigade.

He said: “The fire brigade were brilliant, they were there in about seven or eight minutes.

“People have said that we were very lucky and the firefighters and the electricians said they have never seen anything like it.

“Our flue is less than a metre from another flue that runs down to a live gas boiler in a bedroom.

"Had that flue been in contact, I expect the damage to the property would have been much more extensive.

“A number of fire professionals said it could have been much worse and have commented that it was lucky no one was killed.”

A crew from Malmesbury Fire Station rushed to the scene and quickly realised that the fire had been caused by a loose electrical cable which had snapped and hit the roof.

The Peels’ immediate neighbours were told to evacuate their homes and the group stood outside in the sub-zero temperatures for more than an hour before the power was turned off, and were not allowed back inside until the electric company completed their work at 4.30am.

As well as the potential for disaster in the Peels' home, the other end of the cable dropped down into their neighbour’s garden and one of their family went outside suspecting they were being targeted by a burglar, completely unaware of the dangerous live wire.

A spokesman for Southern Electric said that the cables in question had now been made safe and had been replaced with a double insulated cable which would prevent anything like this happening again.

A length of cable was replaced along Burnivale but it is unclear whether or not other cabling in the Malmesbury could be in the same state of repair.

The spokesman added: “This was a rare, rare set of circumstances because it was a metallic chimney and the live wire did not earth itself.

“Unless you had the same set of circumstances, a metallic chimney and a wire falling on the same roof it would not happen.”