Tragedy was averted by a brave Doune man who risked his life to drag his neighbour from a burning building.
After spotting smoke billowing from the Keltie Place home, Steve Macdonald rushed to the aid of Cathy McAlpine and rescued her from her home just minutes before it was engulfed by flames.
The 28-year-old described how an evening spent mowing the lawn quickly turned into a life-saving mission in the small village of Deanston.
“It must have been just after 7pm when I saw the smoke at the back window,” he said.
“I ran round to the front of the house and I saw that the front bedroom window was open and more smoke was coming out of it.
“I noticed that Cathy’s man’s car was away, so I knocked on the door but there was no answer.
“I then tried the door and, because it was open, I thought that there was a fair chance someone was still in the house.”
With no thought to his own safety, Steve entered the property and, after a quick check of the downstairs rooms, found Mrs McAlpine lying unconscious at the top of the stairs.
After attempts to rouse her by calling her name failed and with the smoke becoming thicker and more acrid by the second, the father-of-two knew that he had to act quickly to ensure both he and his neighbour made it out of the house alive.
Firefighters arrived on the scene soon after the pair were out of the house, with units from Dunblane, Stirling, Callander and Doune working until 2.30pm to douse the flames.
Both were administered with oxygen at the scene, as Steve suffers from asthma while Mrs McAlpine had inhaled a significant amount of smoke and was later transferred to Stirling Royal Infirmary.
However, despite the swift actions of the emergency services, the McAlpines’ semi-detached house was destroyed by the blaze, along with that of their next door neighbour.Ordinary manAlthough he has been hailed a hero by many, including Mrs McAlpine’s husband David, Steve refuses to accept that he did anything out of the ordinary.
“I’ve not been thinking about it too much because what’s done is done,” he said.
“It doesn’t seem quite real yet, as I just acted on instinct. It’s just something you expect to see in the papers because someone else has done it and it’s not something you expect right on your doorstep.
“David told me that he quite believes that if I hadn’t got to Cathy when I did, she would have died.
“I think it worked out well in the end, though, because we both got out safely.
“I’m just finding all the attention I’ve been getting now a wee bit embarrassing.”
Steve, his wife Jillian (27) and daughters Skye (2) and two-week-old Georgia had to stay with his wife’s parents that night because of the fire service activity, while the McAlpines are being put up in a hotel in Stirling as their house is uninhabitable.
Although Cathy couldn’t remember much about the incident, David told The Courier how the inferno left them with little but the clothes they stood up in.
He said, “I was standing in my work clothes and that’s all I had left afterwards because the house has just been gutted.
“However, all this can be replaced and I’m just thankful that no one was killed.”
A spokesman from Central Scotland Fire and Rescue Service said an investigation into the cause of the fire is under way.