Four-year-old rescued from Blackpool blaze by neighbour with bat

A woman has revealed how her partner saved a four-year-old boy from a house fire in Blackpool that killed the child’s parents.

The mother and father of the boy died in the fire in the early hours of Wednesday and their two children remain in hospital. The youngest child, a boy, is in a “very poorly condition”, police said.

Lancashire police and fire officials are investigating the cause of the fire on Peter Street.

Kara-Marie Pearson said her partner, Jake Hartill, rescued the four-year-old after using a baseball bat to smash a glass panel in the front door while the home was engulfed in flames.

The couple, near neighbours on the terrace street about half a mile from Blackpool Tower, were woken up by the blaze at about 2.30am.

Pearson said: “If he [Hartill] hadn’t got that little boy out, he’d be dead. I heard this almighty bang and I looked out my bedroom window and the whole downstairs was literally in flames. You couldn’t even see it, it was pure orange. It was like an explosion. All I could hear was the dad screaming out, ‘Help! Help! Help!’

“Me and my partner, we’ve ran down, the first thing he’s done is he’s got a bat and he’s smashed the window in the door and, as he’s smashed it, the little boy was behind it. He’s lifted him out and got him out, while the dad’s still screaming upstairs. When he smashed the window the boy was stood there, he’s had to lift him out from the fire. His skin was red hot, it were burning.

“Once we moved the little boy to safety the whole windows just smashed, just blew. We all had to stand back because the flames came right out. It was like a wildfire, you can’t explain how them flames were.”

Police said firefighters and officers were called to the address at 2.39am on Wednesday to reports of a blaze with people inside.

The mother of the children was found dead, while the father was later pronounced dead at Blackpool Victoria hospital.

Detectives said they were keeping an “open mind” as to the cause. No arrests have been made.