Damage inside Mike Cooper’s flat

A MILITARY history buff said he summoned the strength of a superhero to rescue his sister from dying in a flat fire.

Mike Cooper told how he rushed into the 77-year-old’s bedroom around 2.30am on Thursday November 2, in just his underpants, to find her sitting-up in bed “in flames like a human torch”.

He said he could not tell if he was in a horror movie or a terrible nightmare and that she was “seconds from death”.

Aged 73, he managed to lift and drag her out of the smoke-filled room into the hall, padding out the flames on her with his bare hands, before turning back to the room as it became engulfed by flames.

With the help of his son he got his sister out of the flat and down to the lobby from the seventh floor of the building in Marylebone, close to ­Baker Street station.

Mr Cooper said: “I think you do just go into a kind of an automatic response. You know the Incredible Hulk was inspired from a real life story of a woman who lifted a car to rescue her trapped baby. I think it was a similar situation with me.

“The whole room was on fire and she was at the end of her bed, actually sitting up, completely in flames. She was like a human torch.

“When I saw this sight, I really thought I was a participant in a horror film, or I was in a nightmare. I couldn’t tell.”

He added: “I carried her into the corridor. I sat her down. I didn’t have time to get a towel. So I put the fire out with my hands.

“From the time I saw her burning on the bed to the time I got her on the floor outside was probably 30 to 60 seconds.

“If I had got there 15 seconds later she would have burned to death. I am a strong atheist, but some of the things that happened that night were truly remarkable.”

Mr Cooper said his sister, who he cares for in the flat when she is there, had been taken out of intensive care and is now being looked after in a specialist burns unit in the NHS-run Chelsea and Westminster hospital.

He said: “They said all her nerve endings burned. She is going to have a skin graft and, amazingly, that might be the only operation she needs.”

He said “one of the things that saved my sister’s life and my life” was persuading his son Charles – who played a crucial role in the rescue – to stay the night at the flat instead of returning to university.

Another was that when he woke to hear her calling out for him, which she commonly does due to a debilitating health condition, he did not go through his usual routine of putting on his dressing gown.

He said: “I sleep in my underpants but, because she is my sister, I normally always put on my dressing gown before I go in to see her. I have to take it off the hook, and it takes about the 30 seconds. If I had done that she would be dead.”

Reflecting on the traumatic experience at his home on the seventh floor of Berkeley Court, Mr Cooper said he had felt guilty about whether he was to blame, adding that he had felt better after being told by an investigator that what he had done was “amazing”.

Mr Cooper said he had lived in the flat, which originally belonged to his mother, for 40 years.

Mike Cooper

He and his sister’s connection to the area stretches back decades and Mr Cooper said she often stayed there when in London.

The solicitor, who specialised in trade union accidents and more recently commercial law, is living in nearby temporary accommoda­tion, in a hotel he proposed to his wife.

The photographs, right, sent to the Extra show the extent of the damage from the fire that is believed to have been due to an electric blanket.

Now that he knows his sister is going to survive, Mr Cooper said he had started to think about the damage to his home and the potential loss of “antiquities” he has collected over many years.

The military history expert said: “I have never been passionate about the law, but I have been about history.

“I have quite a few antiquities from military history. Muskets, Napol­eonic pistols, swords, grenades. All deactivated of course.

“The firefighters joked they were getting a bit worried and were wondering if they were going to have to put a pair of handcuffs on me.”

Mr Cooper said he wanted to share his story as a potential lesson to the public.

He said: “They’ve said the blanket was the likely cause.

“Some of these old blankets may not meet safety standards. I just think people should be thinking about that.”

A London Fire Brigade statement said the cause of the fire was still under investigation, adding: “Eight fire engines and around 60 firefighters responded to the fire.

“Due to the age of the building and lack of a dry rising main, the brigade deployed a 32-metre ladder as a temporary rising main, external to the building, to aid firefighting.

“Firefighters from Padd­­ington, Soho, Kensington and surrounding fire stations attended the scene.”