A MAN is lucky to be alive after a chip pan blaze at his home.

The 32-year-old put the pan on the oven at his ground-floor flat in Dewsbury early yesterday, but then fell asleep in his bedroom.

He woke up about 1.30am, to discover smoke in his flat.

The fat in the chip pan had overheated and caught fire.

The blaze burned through the pan and filled the kitchen with thick, black smoke.

Luckily, the kitchen door was shut, which stopped a lot of the smoke getting into the rest of the flat on School Lane at Westborough.

A Dewsbury firefighter said: "The man was lucky he woke when he did.

"He had already breathed in smoke, but if he had stayed asleep we could well have been dealing with a fatality."

The man was taken to Dewsbury District Hospital, but was not badly hurt.