A MOTHER of two today spoke of her horror as a fireball car hurtled towards the front wall of her terrace home.

Barbara Maudsley and husband Jack, both 43, were watching the burning Ford Fiesta from the bedroom window of their house in Marlton Road, Blackburn, at 1am when it began rolling towards them.

And today Mrs Maudsley said: "It was as if it was in slow motion.

"My first thought was for my family, after all your house is only bricks and mortar. I woke them up and we all ran out of the back."

The fire brigade was on the scene when Jack, Barbara and sons Stephen, 20, and Joe, 16, arrived at the front of the property. They extinguished the flames in just five minutes.

The X-registered car had been abandoned in an alleyway opposite Mrs Maudsley's property and the flames had already damaged a telegraph pole and neighbouring property when it began to move. Mrs Jackie Boardman, whose home backs on to the alley, spent several hours damping down her coal bunker to prevent it setting alight.

Firefighters believe the flames damaged the brakes and released them.

The car came to a halt as it hit the front garden wall but the flames also badly damaged the front of neighbour Caroline Lynch's Austin Metro.

Mrs Lynch's son Paul said he had heard several explosions as the Fiesta erupted in flames.

"I thought it was a gun going off."

But Mrs Lynch, who paid £3,000 for the Metro three years ago, said she was relieved that no-one had been hurt.

"There are an awful lot of young children who live and play around here.

"It is lucky that this happened when it did or else one of them could have been seriously hurt."

The Ford Fiesta is believed to have been stolen from Park Lee Road.

Police were today investigating the incident.

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