A MAN has been hailed a hero after pulling a woman and her three-year-old daughter from their burning house.

Phil Barnes, of Pelham Street, Blackburn, noticed smoke curling from the patio doors of the property which backs on to his rear garden.

He was in his garden at 10.30pm yesterday when he noticed that the patio doors at the back of a property in Westwood Court were on fire. Firefighters said he broke down the front door of the house and awoke the woman and child, before leading them to safety.

He then went back into the house, with another neighbour, and pulled burning curtains from the patio doors, before extinguishing the fire with buckets of water. Peter Frazer, station officer at Blackburn Fire Station, said the man had probably saved the lives of the woman and child.

"This would have been a far more serious incident if the man had not spotted the smoke and acted immediately.

"He did all the right things by alerting the woman and child, and leading them from the house, before contacting the emergency services.

"The house had no smoke alarm and one again we are appealing for people to get them fitted. This could have been a very serious incident."

He said the cause of the fire was being investigated and treated as suspicious.