Heroes pull woman from Xbox blaze

Narrow escape for unconscious gamer

By Lester Haines • Get more from this author

Posted in Bootnotes, 23rd November 2005 10:46 GMT

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An Anglesey woman was pulled unconscious from her house by two strangers after succumbing to smoke generated by a faulty Xbox.

Stuart Ward and Robert Johnson ran from a pub in Llanfairpwll to find the unnamed victim's house engulfed in thick, black smoke and resembling "the Black Hole in Alton Towers" as Ward later put it to the local Daily Post.

Inside were the woman and her father, who had rushed to the scene in response to a call from his daughter before she was overcome. Ward recalled: "We shouted 'Is anybody there?' The next thing the father upstairs answered 'Yes, I'm upstairs'. We shouted 'Anybody else in the house, we can't see.'

"We put some coats over our mouths and ran upstairs. Robert and I were swearing and the father was shouting 'My daughter's here!'. We were going on our hands and knees - that's how dark it was. You couldn't see your fingers if you put them in front of your eyes.

"We felt our way around the darkness. We found her and dragged and carried her down the stairs and outside. She was going in and out of consciousness."

Johnson added: "We could only feel our way about. The father was stumbling around. He couldn't find his daughter. We found her on the floor.

"I tried to get her on my shoulder but it was impossible. She was in a pretty bad way."

Happily, though, the woman made a full recovery after hospital treatment.

Anglesey fire and rescue spokesman Dave Evans confirmed the fire was caused by a "fault in an Xbox game machine" left on standby. Back in February, Microsoft recalled 14.1m Xbox power cables shipped into Europe before 13 January, 2004 and in other territories before 23 October, 2003, as we previously reported. MS admitted to "30 or so reports from users suffering minor burns, singed upholstery or scorched carpets as a result of power lead malfunctions". ®

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