Fatal flat fire

Update 26 October, 2pm:

Essex Police has confirmed that a woman sadly died at the scene. The statement reads:

We were called by colleagues in the fire service to a fire in a property off Radwinter Road, in Saffron Walden, shortly after 10.10am this morning, Friday 22 October. 

We attended to support fire service colleagues in dealing with the incident. 

Sadly, a woman aged in her 60s died at the scene. 

Enquiries are being carried out to establish the cause of the fire but at this stage we do not believe there are any suspicious circumstances.

An investigation into the cause of the fire found it was caused accidentally after rolled up extension leads had overheated.

If you use extension leads at home, please follow our safety advice:

- Don’t overload extension leads or adaptors, they have a limit on how many amps they can take

- Make sure extension cables are fully rolled out before use

- Only use one extension lead or adapter per plug socket. Do not plug one extension lead or adaptor into another

- Use sockets safely. It’s better to use a bar adapter (multi board) on a lead than a block adaptor

Crews were called to a fire in a flat in Saffron Walden today (Friday 22 October) at 10.03am.

Firefighters from Saffron Walden, Newport and Wethersfield attended Radwinter Road and found a fire in a second floor flat.

Crews led residents from neighbouring flats to safety and worked hard to fully extinguish the fire by 11.51am.

The fire was contained to the flat. Crews used fans to clear the smoke.

An investigation will be carried out to establish the cause.

Could you be an on-call firefighter?

Firefighters from Saffron Walden, Newport and Wethersfield are on-call firefighters who live or work within 5 minutes of an on-call fire station.

If you live or work within 5 minutes of an on-call fire station, you could be paid to protect your community as an on-call firefighter. Find out more at join.essex-fire.gov.uk/on-call