TENANTS at a homeless hostel in Watford narrowly escaped injury when a fire took hold in a communal kitchen this week.

The fire happened at the hostel in Queen's Road on Wednesday evening, after cooking was left unattended.

Ten residents had to be evacuated from the block after the fire was discovered in the kitchen.

Sub officer Derek Macleod, from Watford fire station, said the residents were lucky not to have been injured.

He said: "There was fire and smoke damage to the kitchen but no-one was hurt. They were very lucky they didn't sustain any injuries."

Two fire crews from Watford were called to the housing association building at 6.45pm. The fire took an hour to extinguish and two firefighters wore breathing apparatus.

Mr Macleod said: "We used an extinguisher to tackle the fire, some tenants were tackling it themselves. They had left some cooking unattended for about 15 minutes. The room was smoking very heavily, with some flames."

Tenants had attempted to tackle the fire with a nearby water extinguisher, which Mr Macleod said could have been dangerous.

He said: "There were no injuries because there was hardly any oil in there at all. If there is a kitchen fire a lot of the time people use oil so the last thing you should do is put water on it as it will explode."

He added in that situation a fire blanket was the best option.