Tiny Tegan's a life-saver

TINY Tegan is just seven weeks old . . . but she's already a lifesaver!

Tegan's tears woke up her mum just seconds before a torched car outside the window of their flat blew up in the early-morning inferno.

Three shops were also caught in the blast at Felixstowe Road early yesterday.

And today fireraisers were suspected of torching another car - this time at Campbell Road on the Priory Heath estate.

Yesterday's blaze could have been much more serious if Tegan had not woken up.

“She could have saved us,” said mum Victoria Fox. “She's the one who woke us up!”

Tegan, whose bedroom looks directly over the burnt-out car, screamed ten minutes before anybody else in the flat stirred.

“We didn't think much of it and went back to sleep,” said her relieved mother. “Then we heard an explosion.

“When I looked at the curtains I thought: hang on a minute, it can't be daylight yet. I opened the curtains and saw the fire.”

The horrified 27-year-old then sprinted to fetch her daughter, yelled “Get out” to her flatmates, and fled the flat, which sits above Quality Furnishings.

She said: “It's absolutely shocking. What's the point in doing this?”

Her flatmate Suzy Burgon, 25, added: “The car's horn went off and I heard a great big bang. Flames reached the top of the building!”

Flames were extinguished within minutes but the damage had already been done to Victoria's Bakery, The Vanilla Room and Quality Furnishings. Each, along with one adjoining flat, had windows fractured and signs and guttering melted.

Quality Furnishings owner Adrian Marjoram, 36, said: “The whole lot could've gone up. Felixstowe Road is getting dangerous, progressively worse.”

The pavement remained scorched with an acrid smell lingering in the air.

Mrs Burgon called for CCTV to be installed - her own car was damaged earlier this year.

The car was a blue Volkswagen and had been reported stolen from Fonnereau Road the previous night. Police are appealing for witnesses.

The fire followed another life-threatening incident in which arsonists torched a town centre flat in Old Foundry Road earlier this week which required three fire engines and caused the evacuation of a 140-flat building.

Today firefighters from Ipswich were called to Campbell Road just before 3.30am.

One resident who saw the flames, Julie O'Neill, said: “We heard a car alarm go off. I was worried it was mine, but it wasn't. Then I said to my husband that I could smell petrol.

“The next moment we heard a whooof and a bang. The tyres banged too. It really was alight. I was worried that the hedge would catch alight because the flames were so high - but it was okay.”

She said she was shocked - it was the first time she had had any problems in the nine or ten years she had lived there.