A family who escaped their blazing home say they would be dead if it was not for their smoke alarm.

Jackie Parkes, her 18-year-old daughter Catherine and her boyfriend Rowan French, 17, managed to escape uninjured from the inferno in Nelson Avenue, Minster, in the early hours of Monday.

Mrs Parkes’ husband David returned from a night shift at Thamesport on the Isle of Grain to find his property on fire.

Mr Parkes, a mechanical engineer said: “I got a phone call from Jackie and I knew then it was bad news.

“You always wonder what you’ll feel like if you see all your stuff going up in flames, but I just feel really lucky that my family are safe.”

When Mrs Parkes heard the alarm she saw flames downstairs and smoke pouring from the kitchen.

The teaching assistant at Danley Middle School in Halfway said: “We’ve had the smoke alarm quite a few years and we always get it checked every six months or so, but this time it proved its weight in gold."

The entire downstairs is ruined and even clothes hanging in the upstairs wardrobes have been wrecked by smoke.

Full story in this week's Times Guardian