ONE image summed up the horrors of the Birkby fire.

Two experienced firefighters, veterans of many jobs, were shocked into silence by the awful sights they had encountered.

Paul Howard and Shawn Moore, both members of Red Watch at Huddersfield Fire Station, could never have imagined the horrors they would encounter when they responded to a 999 call in the early hours of May 12 last year.

They arrived outside a house in quiet Osborne Road, Birkby, to be confronted with a terrible scene.

Flames were leaping out of the windows and doors of a terraced house and crowds of neighhbours gathered outside, screaming that children were inside.

But inside lay the real horror.

Firefighter Howard said: "Inside the house I can only describe as a blazing inferno.

"The door had melted away and there was fire all down the hall.

"Shawn and I went in with a hose, spraying water on the flames. We were aware there were people inside the house.

"We found one casualty in a front bedroom and six more bodies in a back bedroom.

"Shawn and I came back outside and others took up the equipment. We took our fire kit off and sat in the wagon.

"We didn't talk. I was in shock and shaking from what I had seen and Shawn was the same."

Pictures taken by fire officers and forensic experts show the devastation inside what had been a neat and tidy family home.

A petrol bomb was hurled through a front-room window, spiked with metal nuts to spread the fuel, and petrol poured through the letterbox. This sent flames screaming through every part of the house, apart from the basement.

Plaster was melted off the walls and every room was gutted.

Tragically, the victims died where they had been sleeping.

Their bodies, discovered by the shocked firefighters, were terribly burned. Identification had to be via DNA sampling or through dental records.

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