A SMOKE detector saved the lives of a mother and her two young children.
The alarm on the upstairs landing picked up smoke from the fire at an early stage.
It woke the woman at the family home on Fernside Avenue in Almondbury at 7am today.
She grabbed the two youngsters - a five-year-old boy and girl of seven - and fled to safety.
The fire, which had started in the boy's bedroom, quickly engulfed the entire room.
Station Officer Dave Rawnsley, of Huddersfield fire station, said: "We could see the plume of smoke from the top of the road.
"When we arrived an orange ball of flame was coming out of the small bedroom, along with thick smoke from all the upstairs windows and from under the roof guttering."
Firefighters attacked the fire from the outside while two men went in to douse flames.
Station Officer Rawnsley added: "The boy's bedroom was gutted. The heat was so intense it even distorted and buckled the steel radiator."
The rest of the upstairs was badly damaged by heat and smoke.
