Hero grandad saves girl after gas blast

A disabled grandfather rushed into his burning home to rescue his nine-year-old grand-daughter and pet dog after an explosion ripped the bungalow apart.

Brave pensioner John Davies, aged 66, who walks with two sticks, was badly burned in a suspected gas blast at his home in Arnhem Road, Willenhall.

Incredibly, the family had to chase metal thieves away after they targeted the remnants within two hours of the drama.

Mr Davies' clothes caught fire in the explosion and he had to run outside to put himself out in the snow.

He then raced back into the home to bring his grand-daughter, Amelia, and their Staffordshire terrier, Maggie, to safety. He was taken to Walsall Manor Hospital suffering severe burns to his face, hands and chest. John's son and Amelia's father, Neil, 33, a cleaner, said his father was a "superman" to do what he did when the explosion happened at about 12.20pm on Saturday.

He said: "My old man is a superman, he can't even walk properly, so I don't know how he did it. He had to roll around in the snow to put himself out, and he has something like 21 per cent burns. It's atrocious. My daughter got out without so much as singed hair."

Neil, who was living with his parents, said he was driving his van when he got a call from his daughter saying "the roof has blown off" before the line went dead.

He rushed home, crashing his van into the pavement and bursting his front tyres in the process, to find the house ripped apart.

The front wall was blown off and the kitchen totally burnt out. Virtually all the windows in the bungalow were blown out.

Neil said he waited up the road for his mother, Margaret, aged 64, to come home to shield her from the sight of her broken home, but she came from the other direction and he saw her collapse in shock when she saw it.

Neil added that he was disgusted to come back to the house two hours after the fire had been put out to find metal thieves trying to wrench copper from the walls, and chased them away. "It wasn't even cold yet, I was livid," he said.

The explosion is not seen as suspicious and the cause is being investigated by West Midlands Fire Service.