Serious fire at house in East Sussex town: video shows size of the blaze
and live on Freeview channel 276
At least four fire engines have been called to a fire in the roof of a house in Farriers Lane, Uckfield. East Sussex Fire and Rescue Service urged the public to avoid the area on Twitter.
A spokesman for the service said that they were called at 1.40pm and when they arrived, the roof was well alight.
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Hide AdNeighbour Barry Squires said it may have started in the conservatory.
"As soon as the fire finished in the conservatory, it caught the back of the house," he said.
"We could just see all this smoke billowing out from the roof.
"It's very sad."
According to Barry, a couple of heroic teenagers were going around on their bikes to knock on the neighbour's doors, checking no-one was in, before the owner of the house was called.
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Hide AdThe 37-year-old said that he was now at the scene with the firefighters. No one else needed to be evacuated, Barry said.
He praised the community spirit of the neighbours in the road.
"We've only lived here since February but everyone is very neighbourly - we all message each other now because of Covid, and we look after one of our neighbours - so it was very quick to establish [the occupants] were out," he said.
Barry also had words of praise for the firefighters.
"We thought 'is it going to spread to other properties?' but the fire service were here super quickly: they are the experts and they know what they are doing, so we know it is under control," he said.
At 4pm, a fire service spokesman said crews were still at the scene but had put out the blaze, and there were no reported injuries.