KIM Kelly woke up to the sound of screams and glass smashing as an out-of-control blaze engulfed the house next door in the early hours of New Year's Day.
The Rae Street resident said she feels incredibly lucky to still have her home, after an inferno razed her neighbour's house at Birmingham Gardens about 1.35am.
"We're right next door, it was so scary," she said.
"[We] had to get our little five-month-old out of the house and they didn't let us back in until almost 3am, our neighbour on the other side of us ran in there and got the people out, he's been in hospital too but he's okay now.
"We are so lucky to still have our home. It was so, so close."
In the horror start to 2024, a man was airlifted to hospital and a young woman treated for shock after they narrowly escaped the house fire.
Ms Kelly said emergency services did an amazing job, arriving at the scene at 1.45am, just shortly after she called Triple Zero.
"It was going up so fast, was already going so strong before they were called," she said.
"There wasn't anything they could do."
The house was already fully engulfed in flames when NSW Fire and Rescue firefighters arrived.
While the three people inside had managed to escape, a man suffered serious burns inside and was treated at the scene by NSW Ambulance paramedics before being airlifted to the Royal North Shore Hospital burns unit at Sydney.
NSW Fire and Rescue NSW Superintendent Trent Lawrence said it took firefighters more than an hour to control the inferno.
"It was fully alight by the time crews arrived at the house, and it was contained at about 10 minutes to 3am," he said.
"We had crews there through the night, and because of the injuries sustained by one of the occupants we called fire investigators in to come and do some investigative work for the cause.
"As soon as there's injuries like that we bring them in, there were no initial signs of anything suspicious but they want to do some investigative work as to what the cause of the fire was."
Even with four fire trucks and firefighters doing all they could to control the blaze, the home was unfortunately destroyed.
No injuries were reported for a third person who was at the home at the time.
Firefighters were able to contain the flames and stop them from spreading to any nearby residences.
