By Ciaran O’Neill
coneill@derrynews.net
AN eight year-old girl has been credited with saving the lives of two people after a house fire broke out in Derry yesterday.
Chloe McCourt raised the alarm shortly after 7am yesterday morning after spotting smoke coming from the house at Sutton Gardens in Kilfennan.
As a result, neighbours were able to wake the elderly couple who live in the house and get them out of the property.
Fire chiefs yesterday praised the actions of Chloe and neighbours of the couple, saying there was no doubt that their quick-thinking saved the couple’s lives.
Chloe, who lives in Cornshell Fields in Steelstown and celebrates her ninth birthday in a couple of weeks time, had been staying with her grandparents, Brian and Sandra Aiken, in their Sutton Gardens home over the weekend.
Speaking to the Derry News yesterday, she described how the drama unfolded.
“Just after I woke up, I went into the living room of my granny’s house and I saw the smoke coming from the house across the street.
“I told my granda and then he went out and tried to wake up the people in the house.”
Mr Aiken said he and another neighbour managed to alert the couple, who are both in their 60s, to the fire and they were able to get out of the house.
Neighbours tried to put out the fire, which had engulfed the living room of the house, with a hose pipe before firefighters arrived and brought the blaze under control.