A WOMAN had to be carried to safety by firefighters in the early this morning after a discarded cigarette set light to a wastepaper bin in her bedroom at Borden Lane, Sittingbourne. Her husband was at the top of the stairs when town firefighters arrived and he also had to be helped down.

Station commander Tim Gibson, said: "She had been smoking and had gone to sleep but her cigarette had not been properly extinguished. There were smoke alarms but they had been put up vertically on the walls rather than horizontally on the ceiling so they didn't go off.

"Fortunately she managed to wake up and rouse her husband. He managed to get out of the smoke-filled bedroom to call us but was not able to get his wife out. "

Both were taken to Medway Maritime Hospital in Gillingham suffering from the effects of inhaling smoke. The incident happened at 12.30am.