A shopkeeper has described the moment he helped neighbours to safety as a raging “inferno” destroyed an Inverness house.
Brian Duncan, who owns Dalneigh Stores, was opening up his shop at around 5:30am yesterday when he began to smell smoke.
The 61-year-old told The P&J he walked to the side of the road and saw a cloud of smoke coming from a house at St Valery Avenue, just round the corner.
He said: “I jumped in my van and drove to where the smoke was coming from.
“The house was covered in flames.”
Mr Duncan then started knocking on doors of the adjoining houses to urge neighbours to get out.
Mr Duncan, who runs his shop with wife Lucille, explained: “I knocked on the next-door flat and there was an older lady that thought it was her smoke alarm that had gone off.
“I told her – ‘it’s your neighbour’s house, you need to get out!’
“She shouted at her husband to get their dog and I told them to leave the house through the back door to avoid the intense heat and the flames.”
Mr Duncan then alerted the residents of the house on the other side of the burning property.
He described the fire as “an inferno”.
“The front door was non-existent when I arrived and the downstairs window blew out as I was knocking on one of the doors,” he said.
Inverness man jumps from upstairs window to escape fire
The resident whose house was destroyed by the fire has been named locally as John ‘Boy’ MacPhee.
He told Mr Duncan he had to jump out of his bedroom window to escape the flames, injuring his leg.
“I went around the other side of the house to see if John ‘Boy’ was still inside, but he was already out and said, ‘My house is on fire’,” the shopkeeper said.
“He told me he had jumped out of the upper-floor bedroom window. He had cuts on his leg.”
Mr Duncan believes John ‘Boy’ was “very lucky to get out of the house” alive.
Dalneigh neighbours shocked as fire destroys Inverness home
Dalneigh neighbours described the fire at St Valery Street as “very scary”.
A Scottish Fire and Rescue Service spokesman said: “We were alerted at 5.57am on Thursday, 4 January to reports of a dwelling fire in Inverness.
“Operations Control mobilised five fire appliances to the city’s St Valery Avenue, where firefighters extinguished the fire and worked to make the area safe before leaving the scene.
It took firefighters over six hours to fully extinguish the blaze, as they left the scene at around 12:45pm.
Despite their efforts, the property was fully devastated.
Inverness house fire extinguished after six hours as neighbours recall being forced to evacuate
