A WOMAN has been rescued from her home by firefighters after a fire broke out in the hallway of her house.

Crews were called to Harwich Road, Colchester, shortly before 8pm tonight.

When they arrived they found a fire just behind the front door of the house.

The ground floor was heavily smoke logged and a woman, believed to be in her 40s, was discovered on a flat roof at the rear of the property.

Firefighters brought the woman down a ladder to safety and she was treated at the scene by paramedics for smoke inhalation.

She was then taken to Colchester General Hospital.

Two crews from Colchester and another from nearby Wivenhoe attended the drama.

Firefighters wore breathing apparatus and used two hose reel jets to extinguish the blaze by 8.37pm.

Leading firefighter Dan Kirk said: “When we arrived we could see there was a fire behind the front door, crews immediately donned breathing apparatus and began fighting the fire.

“I went to the back of the house and found a woman had climbed out of an upstairs window and onto what looked like a fairly rickety extension roof, we got a ladder up to her and a firefighter brought her safely down from the roof.

“The house had no smoke alarms at all and this woman is lucky the fire broke out while she was awake, had she been asleep there would have been nothing to warn her of the danger she was in and it could easily have been a fatal incident.

“Initially we feared someone else was in the house and firefighters in breathing apparatus conducted a thorough search. Fortunately there was no one else trapped or missing inside.

“The crew did an excellent job rescuing this woman and made swift work of extinguishing the fire.”

An investigation will be carried out to establish the cause of the blaze.