Police are investigating a blaze which threatened to tear through an empty house last night.
Neighbours raised the alarm when they spotted the fire in the porch of a house in St Wilfred's Road, Burgess Hill, at 9pm.
Firefighters say if they had arrived a few minutes later, the heat of the fire would have shattered the glass door and swept into the building.
Ivor Henley, station commander at Burgess Hill fire station said: "Luckily there was no one in at the time but it could have been very serious.
"Three or four minutes more and the fire would have reached the house."
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