Malcolm and Louise Craig were asleep in bed when the blaze started, and believe they would have died without the early warning from their alarm.

Mr Craig (61), a ship security officer with P and O, managed to keep his head and stop the fire spreading before helping his wife, who was suffering from shock, to safety.

He said: "I didn't panic because I knew what to do.

"I've dealt with fires on the ships before, but if it wasn't for the smoke alarm, we would have been dead.

"Thank goodness we had one, or I would not have woken up."

Mrs Craig (69) suffers from a number of conditions, including rheumatoid arthritis and takes regular medication which makes her sleep very deeply.

"When she's asleep, she's really asleep. If I had been at work, my wife would have really struggled.

"I don't think she would have woken up," Mr Craig said.

Mr Craig had gone to bed at around 10.30pm on Wednesday and was careful to extinguish the small tea-light he had been burning in the office, on the first floor at the back of the house.

But at around 3.15am the smoke alarm started to go off.

He said: "I heard this beep, beep sound and got up, but I couldn't see anything.

"I thought it was something electrical. I went back to bed and then it started again.

"This time there was a lot of smoke on the stairs and I went down thinking a fire must be in a room downstairs, but it was completely clear.

"When I got back upstairs black smoke was pouring out. I couldn't see any flames because the smoke was so thick.

"My wife had called 999 by then and I closed the door to stop the fire spreading."

Mr Craig, of Cromwell Terrace, rushed to get a bucket of water and tipped it outside the door, a firefighting method called "boundary cooling."

'excellent'

He then helped his wife outside where she was treated for smoke inhalation by paramedics.

"We have a stair-lift but I didn't want to risk using it.

"The police, fire brigade and ambulance service were all excellent and the police stayed at the house while we were gone."

Mr Craig believes the fire could have been started by office papers being blown on to the pottery candle holder, which was still hot when he left it.

The couple, who have lived at the house since 1982, were taken by ambulance to Lynn's Queen Elizabeth Hospital at around 4am and were allowed home four hours later.

A spokesman for Norfolk Fire and Rescue Service told the Lynn News: "The message around smoke alarms is very simple – they save lives.


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