A Stratford pensioner has been left with severe burns after his house was ravaged by fire early yesterday evening.

Fire officers were called to the blaze at around 6pm and arrived at the address in Church Bank, Lower Binton to find the first floor, the roof space and the stairs engulfed in flames.

Victim Leslie Stratford, aged 70, was taken to Selly Oak Hospital, Birmingham suffering from between 25-29% burns where his condition is described as "satisfactory".

The officer in charge of the fire crews, Kevin Reade said:

"As we arrived the occupant of the house, who was outside and suffering with burns, told us that there was somebody else in the house.

"So my crew had to enter the house and because the stair-well was alight the access was through a first floor window, but as they got into the house the roof began to collapse and they had to withdraw.

"When you are trying to get information from someone suffering with burns you are always going to get garbled messages and we were being told that there may be a child in the building.

"This obviously meant that we had to investigate every possible place in the house as children will hide anywhere to get away from the smoke, but luckily it transpired that the person referred to had already left the house."

The fire-brigade also had to contend with the possibility of the blaze spreading to the next door house as the building was semi-detached, which meant a marathon effort for the crews.

Reade said:

"We actually left the house at 02:12 this morning after we had used a thermal imaging camera, which can detect any hot-spots or possible danger areas.

"We also had a problem in the fact that the pressure in the water supplies we had connected to was too low, so I had to request that we got our own water bank to the scene."

Police are treating the matter as a domestic incident, and a 36-year-old man who is in custody at Stratford police station is due to be questioned later today.