A DEAF pensioner's good sense saved her life when fire swept through her home.

"She has been very lucky,'' said Fire Sub-officer Steve Harll. "If she had not shut all her doors before going to bed we would have been looking at a manslaughter charge this morning.''

He was one of ten fire fighters who attended Wednesday night's blaze in Spring Garden Road, Hartlepool, and found the 76-year-old woman lying in bed watching television, unaware the ground floor of her home was burning with smoke rapidly filling the rest of the house.

Arsonists had wedged a bin against her back door and set it on fire. The flames burned through the uPVC door, spread into the kitchen and then the dining room.

Mr Harll said: "There was an elderly lady still in the premises, upstairs in bed, not knowing there was anything going on. We managed to rouse her.

"Fortunately for her she had closed all the doors before going to bed and that saved her life. She had been very lucky.''

The pensioner, who does not want to be named, was taken to hospital suffering from smoke inhalation and complaining of chest pains.

Mr Harll commented: "I do not know if whoever did this realised what they were doing; that there was someone in the house. But they were absolute morons.''