A family from the region narrowly escaped with their lives as flames tore through a Cornish hotel, leaving at least one man dead and four others missing.

Rosemary and Charles Snook, from Richmond, North Yorkshire, were on holiday at the Penhallow Hotel, Newquay, when the blaze took hold and the alarm sounded, early on Saturday morning.

They ran to alert their daughter, son-in-law and grandson, but they had already managed to escape from the blazing building.

"We couldn't get out of our fire exit, the flames were coming up so we had to run to the other end of the hotel. The flames were meeting us as we were going down the stairs," said Mrs Snook.

She added: "We just hoped and prayed everybody else got out."

Her daughter, Julia Rouse, said: "We got outside the hotel. The alarm had been going maybe two or three minutes, and it was just an inferno. You looked back and you could see the flames coming out of the hotel. It was mayhem.

"It was just so frightening, just total shock. You come on holiday and you don't expect anything like this at all."

"We've had lots of lovely holidays here and stayed in that particular hotel for some years.

"It was a frightening experience - it's one I hope we never have to experience again. We have lost everything, but we're just so lucky to have each other."

Another North Yorkshire man, 22-year-old Andy Hughes, from Harrogate, was enjoying the last night of a surfing holiday in a hotel opposite the Penhallow.

Two of his group were still asleep as the blaze took hold and started to spread.

"There were so many embers flying towards our hotel. Then we got the call that we had to evacuate," said Mr Hughes.

"I had to run upstairs and get my friends out of bed and kick down doors and stuff.

"They thought it was a joke, so I showed them outside the window and the flames coming out of the other building. They soon got out of bed."