A MAN who crawled through a smoke-filled room to save his friend's life spoke of his terror that he would be too late.

Firefighters said the three men in the Avenue Road, Gosport, house were lucky to be alive after the fire on Sunday morning.

Carpenter Neil Hayes, 33, was staying with his friend Kelly Hendricks when the fire broke out in the kitchen. Kelly, an old schoolfriend of Neil, had come in and put a chip pan on the cooker before falling asleep. Neil woke at 3am, smelled smoke and went downstairs to investigate.

He said: "As soon as I opened the door to the living room I was hit by a wall of smoke - it was unbelievable.

"I could not see anything, but I knew Kelly was in there because I could hear the stereo playing.

After crawling across the room through the choking smoke Neil found Kelly lying on the kitchen floor and managed to rouse him.

Neil added: "The fridge had started smoking, the grill and pans were on fire and the edge of the worktop had started burning."

Neil, Kelly and another man from the house made it outside and called the fire brigade.

Neil said he knows they all had a lucky escape - batteries in the smoke alarm were not working and they would have had no warning.

He added: "I do not know why I woke up - if I had not we probably would have all died - Kelly would have been dead within minutes."

Fire fighters from Gosport agreed that they had all been very fortunate in a fire that showed how important it was to check smoke alarms. Station Officer Fred Brown said: "If the detector had been working he would have been woken up by an alarm well before the room was filled with smoke and it would have been a minor incident."

Firefighters checked the men over but none of them needed hospital treatment, although Neil said the shock did not hit him until long afterwards.

He said: "It was not a question of being brave, but we are all extremely lucky."