A family had a lucky escape after their portable air conditioning unit suddenly burst into flames before exploding.
Gregory Lawless woke at around 2:50am to find the machine ablaze in the upstairs hallway of his home.
The dad unplugged the burning unit before hauling it downstairs and outside – away from his sleeping wife Ainsley and their ten-year-old son.
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But just moments after Gregory managed to get it onto the driveway, the compressor exploded.
The couple, from Milton Keynes, Bucks, have described their narrow escape as a “miracle”, as reported by Need To Know.
Ainsley said: “Our portable air conditioning unit suddenly caught fire while we were asleep.
“Thankfully, my husband woke up in time and managed to drag the burning unit downstairs, out of the house and extinguish the fire.
“We feel incredibly lucky — had my husband not woken when he did, the outcome could have been very different.
“We live directly next to the park, so with the current hot and dry conditions, there was also a real risk of the fire spreading outside and becoming catastrophic.”
Gregory said he was woken up in the early hours of 16 August after spotting a flicker of flame and hearing a beeping noise coming from the machine.
He said: “I just did what I’m sure any parent and partner would do.
“I saw the flicker of a flame and I heard a beeping from the unit, and just ran as fast as I could to get the unit out of the house.
“I couldn’t believe the timing, that it exploded moments after I got it into the drive.”
The family had only moved the air conditioning unit into the upstairs hallway that night after temperatures cooled.
Before then, it had been in the room where their son was sleeping on a blow-up bed.
The machine was around five years old and had been made by a company which went into liquidation last year.
Ainsley said the family regularly cleaned the unit and insisted there were no problems with the electrics at their home.
She said: “There’s nothing wrong with our electrics.
“They’re all perfect.
“We clean the filters all the time – my husband only a couple of days before had hoovered the filters out.”
Firefighters later attended the property to check for smoke damage and make sure the home was safe.
The family are now warning others using portable air conditioning units overnight to take extra care.
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