A RESIDENT has told how she and a neighbour saved a woman who was 30 seconds from death after her flat caught fire.

Diane Patchett was decorating her flat in Swanborough Place, Whitehawk, Brighton, when she smelt smoke.

She went downstairs to the third floor of Heron Court where thick black smoke was filling the hallway.

After rushing her friend and two children out of the block Miss Patchett ran back in and saw a neighbour of hers, Phil, trying to convince the woman who lived in the flat to leave.

Miss Patchett told The Argus: "She was trying to go back in her flat to get her cats.

"I could feel the heat and the black smoke billowing out the door. It was really black smoke, a thick electrical smoke. I nearly threw up, it was that thick.

"If she had stayed in there another 30 seconds she would have been a goner."

After a short while trying to talk her into leaving the flat, Miss Patchett dragged her to safety.

She said: "Phil didn't want to pull her out of the flat, being a gentleman, but I thought blow this and hauled her out."

Emergency services went to the blaze in the third-floor flat on Saturday just before 4.30pm.

It is understood the fire was started by candles next to the TV and that the woman in the flat threw a bucket of water over the TV, exacerbating the flames.

Miss Patchett said the flat was gutted by the blaze.

She said: "Everything has gone in her flat. There's no carpet or anything. It's all burnt.

"I have never done anything like that before, getting someone out of a flat."

The two cats, one Siamese and the other a fat black cat, escaped and were treated at a vet.

The pair, along with the occupier, emerged from the building blackened from head to toe from the smoke.

All three of them spent about an hour in the Royal Sussex County Hospital, getting blood tests and treatment for smoke inhalation.

Advice from the fire service on electrical fires reads: "Never use water on an electrical fire, and don't take any risks with your safety - get out, stay out and call 999."

A fire investigation was carried out on Sunday.