It was a balmy Friday night when a petrol-fuelled blaze ripped through number 210 Chatham Hill.

Fireballs fed by oxygen from open windows destroyed the terraced home in minutes and lit up the sky from a mile away.

Hours earlier, Melissa Crook was chatting excitedly with her mum Amanda about a job interview the next Monday.

She had struggled to find work since leaving her husband and was looking forward to a new start.

Her mother went to bed and she remained with her brother Bohdan. It was the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, so they chatted about conspiracy theories until he fell asleep on the sofa.

Mark Crook roused his son and they all went upstairs. The home fell silent.

At 2.30am, there was a soft “whoof” as Danai Muhammadi and Farhad Mahmud ignited seven litres of petrol squirted through the letterbox using a weedkill sprayer.

Fire ripped through the mist of fuel fumes and spread up the stairs, blocking the escape route.

Amanda Crook was the first to wake. Her bedroom door was always open and she opened her eyes to see pink flames.

“As I came to the bedroom door you couldn’t come past,” she told the trial. “It was there, the whole of the ceiling, the whole of the hall.”

She woke her husband and they screamed to Melissa and Bohdan to get out.

Bohdan woke immediately. His floor was hot. His first thought was for his sister, and he wrenched open his door.

“I went to open her door and, nothing," he said. "I couldn’t push it down. The more I put pressure on it the more it didn’t go.”

Melissa Crook had woken, but could not escape. A clothes airer may have blocked the door.

"i stood and watched the window melt around him and it was only when the window melted that he could get through...” – amanda crook

She grabbed Noah from his cot. At some point, her bed flipped over.

Neighbours saw her and heard her shouting “help, help”, but she was overcome by smoke seconds before they smashed her window.

Firefighters later found the bodies next to her upturned bed. Bohdan, Amanda and Mark had escaped.

Bohdan, wearing only his boxer shorts, flung himself from his first-floor window onto the drive, breaking his right heel and three bones in his left foot. He could feel the heat on his back.

Amanda climbed through her bedroom window onto the flat kitchen roof. Her husband was close behind.

Jurors wept as she told them: “Mark because he was quite a big chap got stuck in the window.

“I stood and watched him burn. I stood and watched the window melt around him and it was only when the window melted that he could get through.”

Mark Crook suffered 80% burns. Neighbour Joseph Pranczke, who heard their screams, rescued the couple by putting a ladder to the flat roof.

“He was shouting to get the children,” Mr Pranczke said. “Halfway down the ladder, it must have been the pain, he threw himself backwards.”

Mr Crook lost consciousness and never recovered. He died six days later at East Grinstead Hospital.

Aftermath of the fire in Chatham Hill

After their escape, the two survivors were in shock as neighbours, pub-goers, firefighters, paramedics and police rushed to help.

Bohdan Crook helped two Eastern European bystanders smash his sister’s window with a loose For Sale sign, shouting “just give me the baby”. Then he blacked out.

Amanda Crook rushed from the back of the house, screaming for firefighters to let her in, then looked down the street.

It hit her: she knew her daughter and grandson were dead.

Today the house still is a blackened shell, the windows and doors covered by metal sheeting.