A young family with a newborn baby who escaped a devastating house fire have revealed how close they came to tragedy.

Rachel Smeeth, 22, her partner Daniel Casson, 27, and her children, toddler Katie-Louise and three-week old baby Matthew narrowly avoided catastrophe when a kitchen fire consumed their house on Sussex Close in Church while they slept in the early hours of the morning.

The family have been left homeless by the blaze on Saturday, March 19 and are currently staying with a friend while they wait to be given a new home by Hyndburn Homes.

New mother Rachel told the Observer the family are relieved to still be together after she and Daniel braved the flames to rescue baby Matthew from the blaze.

Rachel said: “It’s still not hit us yet but we know that we’re lucky to be alive.

“It took four attempts to get Matthew out, but I would have rather died trying to get him out than not try.”

The fire gutted the house in Church, Accrington

Rachel described the terror when she woke to discover her house was on fire.

“When I woke up I started panicking because I knew something really bad was happening but I didn’t know what,” she said.

“The whole house was absolutely full of smoke, you couldn’t see anything at all. I was trapped in the living room because I was so disorientated, I couldn’t find where the door was so I ended up going a bit frantic.

“I blacked out, and the next thing I knew I was in the hallway. I don’t know how I managed to get out but I remember seeing the flames leaping up in the kitchen.”

Daniel Casson, Matthew Casson, Rachel Smeeth and Katie-Louise Smeeth.

As Rachel staggered out of the living room through the smoke, Daniel managed to rescue three-year-old Katie-Louise and take her outside to safety.

But then the couple had the dreadful realisation that their new son Matthew was still asleep in his cot.

Rachel said: “I realised I needed to get Matthew out. I started screaming and panicking and I sent Daniel back in for him and he told me he would get him out safe.

“But he couldn’t get to him because he couldn’t breathe. He got trapped upstairs, disorientated in the smoke.

“So I went back in and grabbed a coat and put it over my face. I got to the bedroom and I heard Matthew cry so that’s how I knew where he was.”

Rachel wrapped Matthew in the coat to protect him and guided by the light of the torches from Fire officers, managed to escape past the flames while Daniel jumped from the bedroom window to safety.

The family were then treated by paramedics and taken to Royal Blackburn Hospital for smoke inhalation checks.

Rachel said that fire officers told them it was a mystery how they managed to wake up after breathing in extreme amounts of smoke.

Both Daniel, Rachel and Matthew suffered from smoke inhalation, but were discharged on Sunday after treatment.

The fire is the latest in a string of unfortunate events for the young couple.

Rachel said: “Daniel had been working at scrapyard but they made job cuts and he was eventually laid off last year. I had three miscarriages before I had Matthew, and he was born premature with the cord wrapped around his neck.

"He’s our miracle baby. We’d just got him home and then this happened.”

Now the family are staying with a friend in Accrington while they try and find a new home, and are appealing for donations of clothes and household items as all their possessions were destroyed in the fire.

Rachel said: “We escaped with nothing but each other, not even the clothes on our backs. My partner had nothing on but his dressing gown. We desperately need household items and clothes, at the moment we’ll be moving into an empty house with nothing.”

A friend of the family, Jessica Davies, has set up a crowd-funding page where people can give donations to help get the family back on their feet.

A fire spokesperson said: “On the way to the incident the crews were told that there could be people still inside the house.

“However, when they arrived at the scene four people including two children had ‘self-rescued’, and were taken to hospital by paramedics.”

The cause of the fire believed to be caused by food left unattended.