A SCOUT leader has told how he and his colleagues ‘jumped into action’ to save a family as a fire tore up the front of their house and threatened to spread inside.
Stuart Thompson and Sam Drayson Le Tissier were standing in the car park at St Ouen’s Mill, also known as the Scout Tower, with their children on Tuesday evening when they noticed black smoke billowing up from a nearby property.
When they got to the house, Mr Thompson used a hosepipe to extinguish the fire, which was burning in a bin pushed up against property.
The blaze was so intense that it had already cracked downstairs windows.
Mr Drayson Le Tissier alerted the occupants – a mother and her two small children – and helped to get them out of the property, before the father appeared from the garden.
They all escaped unharmed.
While the pair were dealing with the fire, fellow Scout leader Stacey Nolan called the Fire and Rescue Service from the Scout hut car park and waited with the children. Describing the incident, Mr Thompson said: ‘We’d just finished our meeting and the children were chatting.
‘The smoke was gradually getting bigger coming from a property. We thought we’d better go and check it out.’
He said that the family ‘didn’t have a clue’ about what had happened and were ‘so shocked’.
Mr Thompson, who works as a technician at the Hospital, added: ‘Sam made sure they were all out of the property and got them out of the house.’
By then, the fire had already been extinguished.
He added: ‘There were cracked windows, black smoke damage to the outside of the building… we got there before it got any worse.
‘The Fire Service checked the hot spots and checked the window frame. They said we’d done well to act as quickly as we did.
‘They said it could have been a completely different situation. The whole house could have gone up in flames if it had been left a lot longer.’
The Jersey Fire and Rescue Service praised the pair’s actions, saying: ‘Without the quick actions of the two Scout leaders the fire could have quickly escalated.’
