A FAMILY-of-six have escaped a major fire at their terraced home in Great Horton.

It happened at 11.30pm yesterday when the blaze that broke out in the kitchen was triggered by a faulty plug socket.

The family were saved when a smoke alarm, fitted by the Fire Service as part of a routine home safety check, went off.

The kitchen at the back of the property on Arncliffe Terrace was 100 per cent on fire when firefighters from Fairweather Green and Bradford stations arrived at the scene.

The alarm alerted the partially-sighted house owner who was downstairs at the time in the front TV room while his wife and their four children, aged from three to 12, were asleep on the upper floors.

Firefighters tackled the flames with six crew members wearing using breathing apparatus to get through the toxic, black smoke that had filled the whole house up to the attic bedroom.

All the family were out safely when the pumps arrived but a family-of-six next door had to be evacuated in case the fire spread.

Watch commander Peter Hanson from Green Watch at Fairweather Green said luckily the alarm had also woken up the mother who discovered smoke creeping up the upper floors. She managed to get back upstairs to wake up the children and get them out.

"If it wasn't for the smoke alarm we fitted three years ago there would have probably been a few lives lost. The male owner of the property was partially-sighted and would have struggled on his own in that situation to wake everyone up and get them all out. The alarm woke the mum up.

"The fire was contained in the kitchen but the whole house was full of smoke. The kitchen is completely destroyed but the outcome could have been a lot worse for this family who were lucky to all get out. It just shows how smoke alarms are life-savers," said Watch Commander Hanson.