A discarded cigarette could have been the cause of a fire in a bedsit.
The fire in the ground floor front room of the house in Southend town centre had been smouldering for hours before it turned into a blaze.
Flat blaze - firecrews checked for people upstairs Picture: STEVE O'CONNELL
Fire crews from Southend attended York Road and were met by a paramedic who had been driving by and saw a crowd gathering on the corner of Southchurch Avenue.
Station officer Rudy Jackson said the paramedic "had popped his head around the door - but there was too much smoke.
"When we arrived we saw that the glass was cracked on the windows. There had been a slow build up of heat - it had been going for a long time. We think it may have been a discarded cigarette."
The heat cracked the ceiling causing plaster to fall down although luckily the fire didn't spread to the room above at 12.30pm yesterday.
No-one was in the nine-bedsit building at the time.
Published Tuesday, July 1, 2003
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