Firefighters rescued a woman and four children as they huddled together in the bedroom of their burning East Sussex home last night.
The five - two children, two teenagers and a woman in her early twenties -were trapped in the bedroom of a house in High Street, Bexhill, when fire broke out in one of the rooms.
One of the group dialled 999 from the ground-floor bedroom of the two-storey detached house. The operator kept the panicked group on the line while two fire engines from Bexhill raced to the scene.
Firefighters got into the smoke-filled house and led the five to safety. The fire caused severe damage to one of the rooms but was dealt with in under 20 minutes.
All five people rescued were unharmed. A spokesman for East Sussex fire brigade said: "The operator did a good job in keeping them calm until the fire engines arrived and they were all rescued safely."
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