Mum saves baby from Gosport car fire

Natasha Kirby was driving Milo to a baby group in Elson, Gosport, when she noticed smoke coming out of the vents.

The 26-year-old stopped in Rydell Road and switched the engine off, before turning it back on but smoke still poured out the vents.

Natasha told The News: ‘By this point I was starting to panic and thought something was seriously wrong.

‘I got out and got my baby out and turned it off.’

After calling her dad, she lifted the bonnet thinking her second-hand Ford Focus had overheated.

But to her horror she saw flames in the engine compartment and so whisked her baby to safety.

‘I moved my baby further away from the car and rang the fire brigade and the car went up in flames,’ she added.

‘I panicked and burst into tears.’

Luckily for Natasha a kind couple ushered her and Milo into their home.

‘We could see the flames,’ she said. ‘By this point it was coming out, I was watching out of the window. We could hear pops and bangs then the fire brigade arrived.’

It happened last Wednesday at around 1pm – just two weeks after Natasha and her fiance Aaron Hobbins, 23, bought the car.

Tim Harrison, blue watch manager at Gosport fire station, said: ‘By the time we got there the whole dashboard was well alight and the passenger seats.

‘The windscreen was gone, whilst we put it out one of the airbags detonated with glass flying 10 yards.’

Although firefighters extinguished the blaze, the car was completely destroyed.

Natasha will still have to pay the £600 insurance charge for the whole year, despite the car being ruined.

She praised firefighters for getting to the blaze and for their actions.