A three-year-old Hackbridge boy let his curiosity get the better of him when he found a lighter in the kitchen and proceeded to set fire to his brothers bed.
The ensuing blaze, around 4.20pm on Saturday, wrecked the bedroom of their second-floor maisonette in
Corbet Close, though the rest of the place escaped with smoke damage.
Fortunately, he immediately went to tell his father about the accident before the bedroom went up in flames, and they managed to find safety and call fire crews.
A fire brigade spokesman
said Wallington firefighters had
invited the boy, his brother and some of their friends to the station for a talk on the dangers of playing
with fire.
In total, 20 firefighters from Croydon, Wallington and Mitcham stations were needed to put out the fire, and a number donned breathing apparatus to get into the maisonette and its blazing bedroom.
The fire took around half an hour to extinguish but the crews spent about two hours attending to the scene of devastation.
The toddler had been on the hunt for some sweets, which were locked away in a kitchen cupboard, when he found the lighter and started playing with it.
Like a number of households in the borough attended by fire crews, the maisonette did not have a smoke alarm.
As a result, Wallington fire station carried out a leaflet drop of the area containing their standard warning about fitting smoke alarms and checking their batteries regularly.
The fire will not be investigated further.
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