A SIX-year-old girl sparked a fire drama when she set her bedroom alight while playing with a lighter.
Chloe Lancaster picked the lighter up from the living room of her family home while her parents’ backs were turned.
She set a piece of paper on fire and dropped it into her doll’s pram. The blaze then spread to the rest of the bedroom.
Now dad Ian Lancaster is warning other parents to be on their guard.
The family of seven, including Ian’s partner Donna Fielding, and their five children, were all inside their semi-detached, council-owned home in Woodman Drive, Walmersley, when the fire started at about 2pm on Monday.
Nine-year-old Kieran was playing with his three-year-old brother, Kyle, in the front bedroom when he smelled smoke coming from another bedroom.
He shouted to his dad, who was watching television in the living room with Donna and the other children: Chloe, aged six, and twins Kelsey and Courtney, aged eight. Kieran said: “I thought someone had just burnt the toast at first, but when I realised it was fire I was really worried.”
Mr Lancaster, aged 37, dashed upstairs where he saw smoke spreading through the hallway.
He said: “I opened the door to the girls’ bedroom and the heat just hit me. I ran downstairs and told everyone to get out.
“If it wasn’t for Kieran, that would have been it, the whole house would have gone up in flames.
“Chloe was frightened half to death, but has seen the damage caused just by flicking a lighter and has learnt her lesson.”
Two fire crews from Bury fire station spent about an hour tackling the blaze. The back bedroom was destroyed and the rest of the house was smoke damaged.
Crew manager Dan Wade said: “They had a lucky escape. The fire was contained to the one room, but it could have been far more serious.”
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