The mum of Tory MSP Annie Wells' grandchildren has described her panic as she and a neighbour carried her twin baby boys down almost a dozen flights of stairs to escape a tower block blaze.
Caren Ferguson, 23, was sitting with three-month-old sons Noah and Freddie in her Springburn flat on Monday morning when a neighbour battered on her door to warn her of a fire on the floor below.
She told the Record how she scrambled to gather up blankets and bottles for the boys and, with the help of the everyday hero from across the hall, carried them down eleven flights as sirens blazed and firefighters stormed the building.
She said: "One of my neighbours knocked on the door - I thought it was the health visitor - and said there was a fire on the floor below.
"I was panicking - I didn't know how to get the boys down the stairs. I could hear the alarms on the floor below from the hallway.
"He just said: 'There's a fire, we've got to go.'"
Her lionheart neighbour - whom she had only met once before, and doesn't know by name - then offered to carry the tots down the stairs with her.
"He just said, 'Give me one', and I grabbed blankets and their milk because they were just in their vests.
"He went first, holding the fire doors open for me. Those stairs have never felt longer.
"I don't know how I would've gotten out without him. I don't even know his name."
Caren and her rescuer made their way down the stairs at the Fernbank Street high rise as firefighters rushed in to evacuate residents, in scenes she described as being like "something out of a movie".
He waited with the boys as she assembled a pram before she took the boys to stay with their gran, Glasgow regional MSP Annie Wells.
Residents were allowed to return to the block late on Monday after fire officers gave the all-clear.
Caren says that she and the tots were unharmed after escaping the blaze - but joked that one was annoyed at having to wait an extra half hour for his bottle.
Tory MSP Annie said on Twitter of the fire: "This is the flats my 2 grandsons and their mum live in. They were just in the floor above.
"They managed to get down the 11 floors on foot and came to mine. Thankful no one was seriously injured."
A Scottish Fire and Rescue Service spokesperson said: “We were alerted at 11.05am on Monday, April 25 to reports of a fire at a property at Fernbank Street, Glasgow.
“Operations Control mobilised four fire appliances and one height vehicle and firefighters extinguished a fire affecting a flat on the 10th floor of a multi-storey building.
“One casualty received treatment for slight smoke inhalation and crews have now left the scene.”
Don't miss the latest news from around Scotland and beyond - Sign up to our daily newsletter here.
