‘Lucky to be alive’
Thursday, 4 September 2008
The garage attached to a house in Alexander Park in the Doury Road that was damaged in a fire.
AN elderly couple from Ballymena were left terrified after being evacuated from their home in the early hours of Thursday morning (August 28) as a fire destroyed their garage and threatened to engulf their Alexander Park home.
At around 1.30am two neighbours alerted Mabel and Ian McKeague, aged 68 and 70 respectively, that the garage was on fire and was spreading quickly towards their house.
The heroic neighbours, Doreen McCrory and Hubert Glass, assisted the couple from the house and the fire service brought the blaze under control.
Thankfully they escaped without serious injury but they did spend the rest of the night in casualty to be treated for smoke inhalation.
Their garage and its contents were completely destroyed and there was smoke damaged to the house.
The garage was used by a family member to store tools for his joinery business.
Speaking to the Guardian after the ordeal Mabel described her neighbours as lifesavers. "If it hadn't have been for them we would not be here today," she said.
"The whole thing happened so fast, it was an absolutely dreadful experience. I had just got ready for bed and was in the bedroom when I heard the banging downstairs. The young fella and girl we shouting 'get out, get out, the house is on fire'."
She explained that both her and her husband suffer from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and diabetes, making the ordeal all the more difficult.
"We have lived on the Doury Road of 42 years and we have never experienced anything like this. If this was started deliberately it is sickening to think someone could do this.
"We would ask that anyone with any information contacts the police, we just don't want anyone else to go through this harrowing experience," she said.
Detectives investigating the fire are appealing for more information.
Meanwhile, in a separate incident, police are treating as suspicious a fire that damaged the living room of an unoccupied house at Alexander Park in Ballymena.
Members of the Fire And Rescue Service who were called to the scene around 2.45am on Wednesday, August 27 extinguished the fire.
