AN alert neighbour saved a Bury family from potential tragedy following a fire started by their dogs!

The Rollinson family were lucky that Mr Glenn Davenport was still awake at 1.30am on Saturday (April 20).

He spotted smoke coming from the kitchen next door to his home in Bolton Road, Bury, and called the fire brigade.

But efforts to wake the family proved fruitless, and they were still in the house when firefighters arrived and tried to break down the door.

They rescued Mr Jon Rollinson, his wife Louise, and their 15-year-old daughter Lindsey.

It turned out that the fire was started by the family's Staffordshire dogs, Naz and Biber. They had accidentally switched on the cooker while trying to get into a plastic bin which had been placed on the hob.

The low heat gradually melted the bin and its contents, with the dogs trapped in the smoke-filled kitchen.

Mr Rollinson said the first he knew there was something wrong was when he was woken by his daughter.

"I heard someone banging on the front door, and saw a fire engine outside. They were shouting 'your kitchen's on fire!'" he said. "I didn't know. They got us out, and went back in for the dogs.

"We've been very lucky. The firefighters said if the cooker had been on for a minute longer, it would have completely caught fire rather than just smouldering."

It was a stroke of luck that Mr Davenport, from Bury, but who now lives in Brighouse, was there. He had only come home the day before to look after his parents' house while they were away.

"I had some friends round, and one of them was having a cigarette in the back yard," he explained. "But there seemed to be a lot of smoke coming by. I saw some flames from next door, dialled 999, then the other neighbours came out and we banged on the door until the firefighters arrived.

"I didn't really do anything, just what anyone else would have done."

Leading firefighter Carl Bostock said it was lucky that Mr Davenport had been up at that time, and urged people to install fire alarms.

"You cannot always rely on neighbours to wake you up, but you can rely on a smoke alarm," he said.