A BLAZE-HIT family owe their lives to a broken bed.

Teenager Dean Ward only survived to raise the alarm and save himself because damage to his bed meant he was sleeping on a mattress on the floor of his burning bedroom, in a pocket of clean air below a descending layer of smoke.

If he had been lying any higher off the floor, he would have suffocated, firefighters said.

His mother, Mary Rose-Pool, and her boyfriend, who were sleeping in an attic conversion above his room, would have stood no chance of escape.

Dean sustained severe burns to his arms and face in the fire in his room, in the house in Albany Street, Middlesbrough.

Firefighters gave him first aid and oxygen at the scene.

Last night, the family were too shocked and distressed to talk about the fire, which was caused by an overturned candle in the early hours of Saturday.

Station Officer Ron Carr said: "They are fortunate to have come out alive. How the lad got out of the room I just don't know."

The temperature in his bedroom was estimated to have been 600C and his head had been lying just 18 inches below a rapidly descending blanket of toxic smoke.

"If he had been asleep in a proper bed I don't believe he would have come out of it alive," said SO Carr.

l A toddler is believed to have started a small fire in the living room of his home while playing with a cigarette lighter.

The three-year-old boy and his mother were taken to Sunderland Royal Hospital as a precaution for treatment for smoke inhalation after the incident in Eastlea Road, Seaham, County Durham, yesterday.