A mother passed her three children out of a first-floor window into the arms of their father to escape flames engulfing their home yesterday.

Paul Hicks, 28, Cyndi Rostigina, 26, and their daughters Chloe, nine, Paige, six, and Abby, three, were woken by a smoke alarm at the house in Burton, near Christchurch, Dorset, before 2am.

Downstairs was filled with smoke and flames after a cigarette is believed to have set fire to a sofa in the lounge. Mr Hicks, a door engineer, jumped 15ft from the window before his partner passed down the three girls to him and then jumped herself.

They were unhurt, but in shock and spent the rest of the night with Mr Hicks' brother-in-law.

"We were awoken to thick, black smoke with the fire alarms going off," said Mr Hicks as he surveyed the wreckage of his end-of-terrace house this morning.

"I came running out of the bedroom, saw all the smoke, just forgot everything, went and got the kids.

"I tried to get out of the front windows but they have child safety catches on so in the end I threw the mattress out of the back window, jumped on top of the gazebo.

"My partner passed the kids down to me. After all three came down, she came out herself."

Miss Rostigina suffered some "scrapes and burns" but Mr Hicks credited their smoke alarm with saving the family's life.

"Thank God for the fire alarm," he said. "That's all I can say.