Window Cleaner Close Call

Dad drops daughter out window after blaze grips flats: A father today told how he was forced to drop his terrified four-year-old out of a first-storey flat before jumping out of the window himself to escape a fire that was raging in the flat below. Gareth Gray, 27, a window cleaner from Galt Avenue, Musselburgh, was alerted by neighbours when the flat downstairs caught fire and, fearing that a gas explosion may be imminent, was forced to drop his daughter McKenzie on to a makeshift crash mat of sofa cushions. Mr Gray then took the 15-foot drop himself but tore the ligaments in his leg when he missed the cushions and landed on hard concrete.

Mr Gray, who has a heavily bandaged leg but is otherwise unscathed, today recounted his ordeal when the fire broke out on Sunday evening. He said: "The neighbours were shouting up to us to get out of the house because the flat below was on fire and they thought they could smell gas," said Mr Gray. "We ran to the front door but the stairway was totally full of smoke so the only way out was through the living room window. "As we made our way back into the living room, we heard an explosion below us and thought that the whole building was going to go up, so my partner and I started throwing cushions out of the window to drop McKenzie on to. "She was having a bit of a fit with the fear, and I told her that she would have to go out the window and she kept saying 'No, daddy, no'. "It had to be done though.
"Our flat is fitted with gas and there was every chance a gas explosion could have torn the building apart if we'd waited, so McKenzie went out the window and I jumped out after her." His partner and McKenzie's mother Natalie McIntyre, 25, a student, was about to make the jump herself before fire crews arrived and advised her to stay in the flat and await a rescue. McKenzie ran into the arms of her grandfather David Peat, 43, a painter and decorator who lives nearby and was also alerted to the fire, but when Mr Gray made to run after her, he collapsed on the floor. "I must have landed in between the pillows and hit the ground," said Mr Gray, an amateur footballer who plays for Ormiston in the East of Scotland League. "I thought I'd broken my leg but the hospital later told me that I had torn every ligament in my ankle. "McKenzie was shouting for her daddy but I just couldn't move. "I'm glad that the football season has just finished so that I'll have the summer off to recover." Fire chiefs believe that the fire was started by a neighbour smoking in bed. They say the "explosion" the couple heard was most likely the inner pane of the blazing flat's double glazing cracking with the heat. Neighbours said the downstairs flat's occupant, thought to be in his 50s, emerged with his face blackened by soot and blood streaming from his leg.