RELIEVED mum Carolyn Clode has told how her seven-year-old daughter Lucy escaped an horrific petrol station blaze.

Lucy had been in her mother's Land Rover Freelander on the forecourt at the A4 filling station in Fyfield just minutes before a van smashed into the petrol pumps, sparking an inferno that engulfed Mrs Clode's car on Thursday.

The youngster had only got out of the Freelander because her mum had agreed to buy her some sweets from the petrol station shop. She was in the shop with her mother choosing sweets when the fire started.

The blaze tore through the forecourt and left the garage in ruins.

Mrs Clode, who lives in Lockeridge, said: "She was in the shop with me thank goodness and was looking for some sweets. I was stood waiting to pay when the lights suddenly went off and there was a large bang. I looked outside and there was fire everywhere.

"I grabbed Lucy and we ran out of the shop and down the road to get away from the fire."

Mrs Clode, 39, said that when she first saw the flames they had not spread to her own vehicle but rather than take any risks she decided that running for safety was the best option.

She said: "It would have been stupid to go near it."

The three-year-old Freelander was reduced to a smouldering wreck.

Mrs Clode had collected Lucy from Kennet Valley School at East Kennett, leaving her older brother Tom, nine, at an after school club.

She called in at the garage for petrol and, when she went to pay for her fuel, Lucy asked if she could go into the shop as well for some sweets.

While Mrs Clode, Lucy, and others who had been the garage shop, waited a safe distance away they could hear small explosions as the petrol tanks and tyres on the four vehicles on the forecourt exploded.

Mrs Clode called her husband Steve, who is the divisional director of marketing for Swindon-based Nationwide, and he drove to Fyfield to collect her and Lucy.

Firefighters told Mrs Clode that if she had been standing at her vehicle with the petrol nozzle in her hand at the time of the crash she would have been at the centre of the blaze.

However Mrs Clode was in the safety of the forecourt office waiting to pay for her fuel.

Mother-of-three Susan Miller, who lives on the hill directly above the garage, also fled the blaze with her children.

She had just collected her sons Nicholas, six, and Andrew, four, from Kennet Valley School and returned home with their baby sister Rachel, ten months, when she noticed smoke rising. "Within seconds it was becoming darker, blacker and thicker and my instinct warned me that the garage was on fire," she said.

"I just knew we had to get away. I didn't even bother getting the children to put their shoes on, I just got them into the car and drove down to the bottom of the hill and turned right so I didn't have to go past the garage.

Mrs Miller fled via the back roads to Marlborough where she was met by her husband John, who she had stopped to phone.

The family were not allowed back to their home until 7.30pm and feared the worse. "I didn't know what we would come back to," said Mrs Miller. "But the house was undamaged, apart from the smell of smoke and petrol that lasted about three days."

She added: "I'm just amazed and thankful that nobody was hurt. When you see the damage, you wonder how no-one was killed."