TWO quick thinking drainage engineers have been hailed as heroes after they stopped a fire completely destroying a house by putting out the blaze using equipment used to unblock drains.

Paul Asling, 27 from Harold Hill and Mannix Rooney, 30 from Harold Hill tackled the blaze in Aveley on Tuesday November 23 before fire crews arrived using a 70 gallon jetter unit.

Mannix said: “It was just a little bit of quick thinking that stopped the fire in its tracks and the firefighters have said that if it was left just minutes later and everything could have gone up then things would have been just even worse than they are.”

The pair who work for 1st Kenclean Drains and pipe cleaning in Philip Avenue, Romford were working on unblocking a drain in a car park when they got a strong smell of something burning.

When Mannix climbed on top of the van, he saw that a shed in a garden was completely destroyed by a fire and it had also spread to the house.

Using a jet pressure washer fitted in the vans, which is used to unblock the drains, they managed to out the fire in the house and to bring it under control.

Paul said: “The garden shed was just completely destroyed and we could see that the fire had spread to the house because all the windows and frames were melting and they were just flames everywhere.

“The homes owner was just standing in the garden pacing around and just looked really confused, she was just in a state of shock and did not know what to do.”

When the fire crews arrived from Purfleet and Aveley fire stations the fire was completely out and they just inspected the house and the garden to make sure it was safe.

The fire is thought to have been caused by an electrical fault in the washing machine and dryer that were in the garden shed.

Mannix said: “It is something that I would definitely do again and I hope that someone would do the same thing for me if my house was on fire.

“I did get a huge amount of adrenaline rush from it.”

A spokesman for Essex County Fire and Rescue Service said: “Two workmen started to tackle the fire in a garden shed before the arrival of fire crews, it’s thanks to their quick thinking and innovative use of a pressure washer that crews were able to get on top of the fire so quickly.”