A FAMILY of 10 was made homeless when fire raged through the top floor of their house in Gravesend.

Fire crews were called to Hawkins Avenue on the Kings Farm estate on Sunday morning.

They arrived to find flames leaping from the first floor of the terraced house and had to move swiftly to stop the fire spreading to neighbouring properties.

Firefighters wore breathing apparatus check the house and make sure no-one was inside. A teenage girl and young boy, thought to have been in the house when the fire broke out, escaped unharmed.

A neighbour said: "They are a family of 10 that live there but I don't think they were all in at the time. They only moved in three weeks ago."

A spokesman for Gravesend fire brigade said: "Yet again this was a property which did not have smoke alarms.

"The majority of one of the bedrooms was damaged by the fire and the rest of the house quite badly smoke damaged and therefore uninhabitable. We are carrying out an investigation into the cause of the fire."