Five Flee Smoke-Filled Home at Conisbrough

A Conisbrough couple and their three children, including a three-month-old baby, fled from their smoke-filled home in Old Road after fire broke out early on Saturday morning.

Yorkshire Main Colliery worker, Mr Mark Kaye (40), carrying his baby daughter Catherine, led his two sons Stephen (11) and Christopher (8), to safety through dense smoke which threatened to trap them in their bedrooms.

His wife, Mrs Audrey Kaye, dashed to a nearby phone at the junction of Old Road and Conan Road, but found it out of order and had to rouse neighbouring Baptist Church Minister, the Rev C Keogan, to call the fire brigade.

Firemen from Mexborough and Conisbrough used breathing apparatus to enter the house and contain the damage to the living room, where a fault in the chimney breast had started the blaze. The room and its contents were severely damaged and a quantity of children’s clothing destroyed.

Mr Kaye told the “South Yorkshire Times”: “it happened so quickly. We could have suffocated. It was the smell of smoke that woke me up. It was so thick that I was thinking of lowering the children out of the bedroom window using bedsheets. But in the meantime my wife had succeeded in getting downstairs and we managed to get out all right.”