A woman is lucky to be alive after a passing motorist woke her up and pulled her out of a burning building yesterday morning.

But her hero, Maxwell Burrows said Linda Chaves was upset at him for banging on her bedroom window so early in the morning. ?I?m sound asleep, what?s going on? ? Ms Chaves said to him.

?Lady, your house is on fire! ? Mr. Burrows replied. ?You need to get out!?

Mr. Burrows grabbed hold of her arm because she tried to run back inside, despite the thick, acrid smoke, he said.

Speaking from the scene yesterday, her sister said Ms Chaves is a pedlar who sells goods from the boot of her car. But most of these goods are believed to be destroyed, as they were stored inside her home.

?Thank God that gentleman happened to be passing by and came in and pulled me out of my window,? Ms Chaves said. ?He saved my life. Thank God for that.?

Just before 8 a.m. yesterday, Mr. Burrows was driving past North Shore Road in Hamilton parish when he saw thick smoke billowing out of a second floor apartment. ?I do not think she would have made it,? Mr. Burrows said. ?She is lucky to be alive.?

Mr. Burrows said he saw flames shooting out the side of the building as he drove into the driveway to investigate the smoke. ?I ran around and checked the downstairs apartments to tell them what was wrong before I went up the stairs to contain the fire,? he said.

When he got upstairs he banged on Ms Chaves? bedroom window. He said he made sure there was no one else in her apartment with her, before he pulled her out.

?She wanted to go back in and grab stuff, but the smoke was so thick it was choking me and I was outside,? he said. ?Me and another gentleman ran up the stairs after I pulled her out and got a ladder and a garden hose and was spraying water inside where I saw flames.?

Mr. Burrows is a supervisor at the Public Transportation Board. He said it was lucky he stopped to get a coffee yesterday morning, or else he could have missed seeing the smoke.

From a distance he thought the smoke was caused by someone making breakfast, he said, but as he got closer he soon realised the smoke was too thick for that.

?I thought maybe it is someone burning a frying pan, but then I saw the flames,? he said. ?The smoke was too thick, I knew something was wrong.?

He said people on the road were just looking at the smoke but did nothing. He said he was the one who called 911.

Bermuda Fire Service Lt. Dana Lovell said their first report of the fire was at 8.03 a.m.

Fire Service vehicles from Clearwater Fire Station arrived 12 minutes later. ?Two firefighters entered the building in breathing apparatus using a one-and-a-half inch hose-line,? Lt. Lovell said. ?They encountered heavy smoke conditions in the upper apartment.?

He said the fire was brought under control within 30 minutes. The entire apartment sustained severe heat and smoke damage, he said.

Fire investigators were still sifting through the debris looking for the cause of the fire.

?Thank God for her that man happened to be driving by,? Lt. Lovell said. ?The Bermuda Fire Service is extremely grateful to members of the public who would put themselves in harms way to help a neighbour.?

Another lesson to be learned from this narrow escape, he said, was to always sleep with your bedroom door closed. Her closed bedroom door acted as an effective barrier against the ?acrid, black smoke? that caused so much damage to the rest of her home, he said.

?The initial damage estimate is approximately $30,000,? he said. ?It will take a lot of work to clean that up.?