Huddersfield hero Mickey, 3, wakes family up in fire drama
Sep 13 2010 Huddersfield Daily Examiner
Youngster saves family home from fire
LIKE many little boys his age, Mickey Hellawell loves watching Fireman Sam.
But the three-year-old got the chance to become a real-life hero when he saved his family’s home from burning down.
Firefighters have praised the swift actions of the youngster who awoke to find 15ft flames shooting up outside his bedroom window.
Tony Rostron, crew commander at Huddersfield fire station, said: “He’s a little hero.
“If we’d have got there minutes later the house would have been on fire.”
The youngster awoke from his sleep at around 3am on Saturday to see flames outside his Primrose Hill home.
A skip by the side of the three-storey house, which the family had been using for garden work, had been deliberately set on fire.
The flames had burned through the new fence and were heading towards the porch at the back of the property on Orchard Terrace.
As they were on higher floors the rest of the family slept soundly unaware of the blaze, but Mickey spotted the fire through the window of his basement bedroom.
Mickey’s dad Sean, 40, said: “He woke up in the early hours and wanted a drink.
“He saw the fire through his bedroom window. He woke his older sister Georgina, 14, who ran upstairs and woke me and my wife Jan.
“It was a big fire, the skip was well alight and the flames were 15 feet high.
“The fire burned straight through the fence and was starting to burn the porch – a few minutes later and the house would have been burning.
“We rang the fire brigade and got everyone ready in case we had to get out of the house.”
Firefighters arrived minutes later and spent around 20 minutes battling the blaze.
The charred remains of the skip and blackened porch were a frightening reminder of what could have happened if it hadn’t been for the little boy’s swift actions.
