A WOMAN has described the moment a neighbouring block of flats caught fire in Westbourne.  

Ellie Milner lives in a building behind the block of flats that caught fire in Poole Road.

She woke up to the sound of breaking glass shortly before 7am.

She said: “I’m not sure what caused the fire because they’re still trying to find that out but I woke up at about 6.50am and I heard some noises and it sounded like the binmen, with smashing glass, so I just ignored it and it got louder and louder, so I looked out of the window and there was this massive glare of flame and it looked pretty bad from where we were.

“We were just watching it and we noticed all of the emergency response team showed up and there was a lot of them, and they were trying to tackle it for about 40 minutes, they probably only put it out fully in the last ten minutes or so and there was water gushing off the whole roof.

“I think the main damage was at the front of the building and there was shrapnel and things falling from the building on the left-hand side so it didn’t look good.

“It looks like they’re just on standby at the moment because there keeps being occasional bits of smoke coming off the building and then they’ll get the hose out and put it out again.

“When the fire was going on you could see people still in their flats, the lights would come on because the alarms maybe had woken them up, but they were still in their flats and then we saw someone on the landing because we can see directly into the landing on our side.

“I think the fire people came in and evacuated everyone and I believe there are quite a lot of residents at the front of the building currently.

“I live at the back of the building, there’s a car park at the back so I could see the fire completely clearly and the reflection of it on the Premier Inn building next door as well.

“It was big enough to be glaring and above the actual roof it was that high up, it must be a top floor flat I reckon but I’ve not seen the front of the building.”