Six fire engines and around 40 firefighters were sent to the blaze in Galpin’s Road, Thornton Heath, just after 7am on Monday. Kutoya Kukanda, 50, and Delroy Simms, 62, said they helped rescue three children from the rubble but feared a girl aged about four or five was still trapped inside. They said they believed the children’s mother had evacuated. Dozens of residents gathered outside the police cordon in their pajamas. Some said they had reported a strong smell of gas two weeks ago, and others said they had felt dizzy and unwell for the past two days. A local resident told Sky News they heard a loud explosion several streets away, which felt like “a storm” coming through the house and blowing open the doors. Others said they were woken up by the noise. A man who lived down the street said the windows and doors of his son’s room were shaking after the explosion. London Fire Brigade said it received 14 calls to the incident, while neighboring properties were also damaged. “Three people were rescued,” he said. The causes of the fire and explosion are not yet known, he added. Metropolitan Police officers and paramedics are also at the scene. A London Ambulance Service spokesman said: “We attended four patients to an incident in Galpins Road, Thornton Heath. One was discharged at the scene and three others were taken to hospital. “We remain on the scene with our emergency service colleagues.”
