The moment a woman’s house is blown up as she tries to make toast

Amazingly, Pamela Gilson escaped the blast with only minor burns to her face and hands, singed hair and eyelashes.

She returned home to find one of her pet cats, Daisy, buried unharmed under the kitchen rubble, where she had been just hours earlier, but Toliver, her ten month old white cat, is still missing.

She told how she “waited to die” after a spark from her toaster ignited a gas leak and blew her house up.

The 61-year-old, who lives there alone, was making a slice of toast for her supper on Saturday evening when the appliance sparked and caused an explosion, blowing her kitchen extension up and leaving her trapped under the rubble.

Neighbours came to her rescue with one breaking down her front door to search the house and another pulling her out of the rubble at the back of her house.

Speaking outside her end-of-terrace stone home where the windows are boarded up and debris from her kitchen litters the street, Mrs Gilson said: “It all happened so quickly. The toaster sparked and there was this massive noise. It was like bang, bang, and I thought I was going to be electrocuted.

“I was just waiting to die. It was very scary. Then all of a sudden I was lying on the floor under all this rubble.

“At first I thought the fridge and cooker had fallen on me, but then I realised it was the wall of my kitchen extension.

“I’m very lucky to be alive. I don’t know how I got out of there alive. I could hear one neighbour, John, calling out ‘is anyone in there?’ I shouted back a few times but I’m not sure he heard me.

“I know he broke in through the front door and was trying to find me but I was at the back where my kitchen is.

“My neighbour, Rachel, saved me by pulling me out of the wreck. I could hear her saying, pull yourself out but I was on fire and there were flames all around me.

“I kept slipping because the roof was wet because of the snow and everything.

“She stuck her hand in and just dragged me out. Then the ambulance arrived and I was taken to hospital.”