An elderly man has died following an early morning blaze in Mains Loan, Dundee.
Fire crews raced to the detached cottage after a taxi driver saw smoke coming from it and raised the alarm at 4.15am on Monday.
The man, who was found on the first floor of the cottage, was removed by firefighters but pronounced dead at the scene.
His identity has not been released until next of kin have been informed. The incident is not being treated as suspicious.
It is understood that there was not a working smoke alarm in the house and Tayside Fire and Rescue spent much of the day visiting addresses in the area offering home safety visits and fitting smoke detectors.
Macalpine Road station manager Keith Dyer said the cottage blaze had posed a challenge to fire crews.
“The whole building was full of smoke with a lot of heat on the ground floor, which made it difficult,” he said. “We had to establish if there were people in the property and then effect a search and rescue. The fire started in a downstairs room.
“A taxi driver had seen the smoke and thought it was coming from a tumble dryer at first. He banged on the door to raise the alarm but there was no answer and he phoned us.”
Tayside Fire and Rescue group manager Rab Middlemiss said, “Six firefighters wearing breathing apparatus entered the property. They located and extinguished the fire and subsequently carried out a search of the house.
“While carrying out the search they found an elderly male in the first floor of the house who they quickly removed and passed to the paramedics who were at the scene.”
The cottage’s front rooms sustained extensive damage in the fire, which was attended by crews from Kingsway and Macalpine Road stations.
A police spokesman confirmed that an elderly man had died in the blaze but said there were no “suspicious circumstances” and a joint investigation between the police and the fire services is to be carried out.
This was the second fatal fire in the Stobswell area in a matter of months, after Monica Robertson (56) died in February following an outbreak in her Baldovan Terrace home.