Quick-thinking Jerome Crockwell saved a mother and her baby yesterday when flames swept through their Somerset home.

Mia Winters, 34, and seven-month-old Allan were fast asleep just before 3 p.m. when fire broke out in the Scott?s Hill Road house.

Mr. Crockwell, a neighbour, was alerted by billowing smoke escaping from the house?s windows.

He called 911 and left the dispatcher hanging on the line as he grabbed the garden hose and jumped over a boundary fence to help.

He noticed Ms Winters and her son asleep on a bed inside one of the rooms and banged on the bedroom window, screaming for her to wake up.

When she awoke, she had no idea the house was on fire, but passed baby Allan through the window to Mr. Crockwell, who then helped her climb to safety.

By then firemen from Port Royal had arrived. They battled the blaze for almost 25 minutes before getting it under control.

Mr. Crockwell said he hated to think how differently things would have turned out if no one had been around.

?I was just about to go into my little room back there and turn the music up real loud. I wouldn?t have heard a thing.?

As he stood watching fire-fighters remove their equipment from the burnt-out kitchen, he kept one arm around Ms Winters who was still in shock.

Ms Winters and her son shared the house with two other families, including four children.

?We?ve lost everything!? she said.

She added the fire could have been started by a burning candle left unattended in another resident?s room.

?We?ve told her so many times not to leave candles burning, but look what happened. She?s not even here. She left the candle burning and left to go and have some fun or something,? she said. The resident she was referring too, Charlita Campbell, had not yet been informed of the fire.

Another resident, Itah Reid, who has two daughters, stood crying as she watched firemen dig through the burnt out rubble inside the house.

?I have no idea where we?re going to live now,? she said.

She was comforted by two friends who work with her at a bank in Somerset Village.

Meanwhile Ms Winters? boyfriend, Allan, climbed through the bedroom window where his son almost died to retrieve several items of blackened baby clothing and tins of baby formula which had miraculously remained intact.

?We just bought so many bags of groceries. Now it?s all gone,? Ms Winters said, pointing to a heap of blackened and cracked cans and potatoes lying in a corner of the room.

While was at the scene, Ms Campbell arrived and walked around the house in a state of shock.

?My candle didn?t do this! ? she told her house-mates angrily. ?There was just a little bit of wax left in the bottom of a glass. It would never have caused this.?

Ms Campbell said she had no choice but to burn candles in her room ? there was no electricity in the upper part of the house they all shared.

She had approached in February this year to complain about the state of the house which had windows boarded up with wood and electrical wire hanging exposed along the outside walls from the ground floor ? which did have electricity. There was also an open pit of grease and dead cockroaches piled up beneath one of the kitchen windows.

Gas bottles had been ripped out yesterday by the fire department and lay some distance from the back door.

Lieutenant Dana Lovell said it had been a busy month for his department. This was the second house fire in two weeks ? in the other a woman had also been pulled to safety through a window. In addition, the fire department had also been called to Sandys Secondary School two weeks ago in response to a fire started by children playing with matches.

The school lies directly across the street from the house gutted yesterday.

Lt. Lovell said the latest fire only brought home the importance of having smoke detectors and fire alarms in homes.

?This could have been so much worse if Mr. Crockwell had not been around,? he said.

The owner of the house, Carlisle Simons, was not home at the time of the fire and lives in the downstairs area of the house which remained undamaged in the fire. understands that Mr. Simons plans to demolish the house in the near future to build condominiums. Meanwhile, former residents of the house in Scott?s Hill Road have nowhere to live and have lost most of their belongings. None of the residents had household insurance.