Saved children meet firefighters

Firefighters showed the children around Slade Park fire station

Three young children and their mother who were rescued from a house fire in Oxfordshire have met the firefighters who saved them.

Charmaine Partlett and three of her children had to be carried from their home in Headington after being woken by the smoke alarm early on Sunday.

The children and their mother were taken to hospital but made a good recovery.

It is thought an iron was responsible for the blaze.

The family met crews at Slade Park fire station in Cowley on Friday.

Station manager, David Heycock, said Ms Partlett had been "frantic and hysterical" when crews arrived at the scene.

She had been leaning out of the second floor window screaming to firefighters that she had been separated from her children.

The children were saved by crews after becoming separated from their mother

"Crews quickly found a scared and confused young boy of about eight years old in the ground floor corridor before two young girls, one two and the other four years old, were handed through the broken door and out of the building."

Ms Partlett said she has had a "dramatic change" in the way she checks electrical appliances in the house.

"I go round checking all the plug sockets, turning everything off.

"The only thing I leave plugged in is my fridge and freezer, and I do that at least three times."

She said she realised how lucky the family was to have had a working smoke alarm: "When the bacon's cooking in the kitchen, don't turn off the smoke alarms, please," she said.