A FIREFIGHTER has warned of the dangers of leaving chip pans unattended after flames ripped through a kitchen.

Three crews were called to Manchester Road at around 1am on Friday after a fire was sparked by a chip pan.

Kieron Ogden, crew manager at Burnley, said the two occupants of the house had gone to bed, leaving the chip pan on in the kitchen downstairs.

One of them was woken by the smoke a short while later and went down to the kitchen in a bid to extinguish the fire.

Firefighter Ogden said: "When they realised they couldn't put the fire out, they got outside of the house.

"When we arrived we were told there was still a person inside of the house, so we called through to Nelson for assistance."

As firefighters entered the property the man was found walking down the stairs. Both were treated by paramedics at the scene for the affects of smoke inhalation.

Crews remained on the scene for a couple of hours to asses the damage and establish the cause of fire.

There was smoke damage to much of the ground floor of the house with parts of the kitchen badly damaged.

Now, Mr Ogden has warned of the dangers of leaving a chip pan unattended.

He said: "The combination of cooking late and night and using an old-style chip pan will eventually result in this kind of incident.

"There are more modern appliances available for this style of cooking and we would advise people to think twice about using old chip pans."

According to the UK Fire Service chip pan fires cause one fifth of all accidental dwelling fires attended by the fire and rescue service in the UK each year.

Nearly 20 people are killed or injured every day in accidental fires that start in their kitchen, the most common of these caused by deep fat frying.

A spokesman said: "If you do choose to deep fat fry your chips, make sure you do it safely. Better still, choose oven chips or use a thermostatic fryer."