A 26-year-old man needed hospital treatment after a fire destroyed his flat.

Andrew Martin tried to fight the fire at his flat which is believed to have been started by carelessly discarded smoking materials and suffered a burn to his right thigh and smoke inhalation.

Firefighters were called at 5.45am yesterday to Palatine Square, Burnley and found the occupants of three other flats, men in their 30s, 40s and 50s in the block had been evacuated from the building. Sub-officer Neil Ashworth said: "We are treating the fire as accidental.

"The occupier had tried to fight the fire but was beaten back.

"The first floor flat was destroyed and there was severe smoke damage to the rest of the first floor. Five flats downstairs were moderately smoke damaged."

Neighbour Stuart McLean was woken by Mr Martin shortly before 6am. He lives in a ground floor flat in the large detached house.

He said: "He was banging on my door shouting about the fire in his flat.

"He asked me for a pan of water because his flat was on fire, but it needed more than that.

"I was worried about an old bloke that lives in an upstairs flat, luckily we managed to get him out.

"We had to wait outside for over an hour in the freezing cold, but it could have been a lot worse -- we could have all been killed.

"If they shut this place down, we will have nowhere else to go, and all because of an accident.

"We are lucky we are not all dead."

Firefighters had to break the locks on the doors of the flats to see if everyone was out of the building.

Later in the morning they were called back to the scene as timbers in the roof above the flat re-ignited.