A mother and her son ran towards danger when they saw a blaze at a local farm.

Yvonne Petry and her 16-year-old son Martyn were on their way home from work when they saw the sky glowing in the early hours of Saturday morning.

They arrived at the farm in Laversdale, near Brampton, at the same time as PCs Euan Stitt and Iain Parsons, who are since being considered for police bravery awards.

As the officers rushed to wake the farm owners, Yvonne, of Warwick Bridge, alerted their son who lives further along the main road, before driving towards the huge fire herself.

“There was one point I thought ‘we are risking our lives here’, but you just do it,” she said. “We could have just carried on home but you don’t, you go to see if you can help somebody.

“The sky was absolutely amazing. We knew when we came out of work there was something massive ahead of us.”

Having grown up in Laversdale, Yvonne knows the family involved and was also able to call on her dad Michael Lindsay and brother Barry Lindsay, as well as the farmer’s other son for additional man power.

The family were at the scene for four hours. They worked to block the nearby beck to ensure there was a water source for the fire service and cleared the sheds of livestock and other valuables including a historic tractor. Removing tyres off the silage was also a task.

“You just think ‘something needs to be done here, we need to help’. Martyn was brilliant. He just got involved and was pulling the tyres off the silage pit with the firemen to stop it from spreading,” said Yvonne, a mum-of-three.

“It was a lot for him to go through. He was amazing.

“We have known the family all our lives. My dad used to do a lot of work there. You have just got to get into the community spirit and go and help. When somebody needs help, you go and help.”

Cumbria Fire and Rescue Service station manager Ian Seel has praised the fast actions of the police officers and Yvonne’s family.

“It was on a large scale. Luckily for us the actions of those who were first on scene made our job an awful lot

easier and safer for us to work.

“On this occasion all the actions that took place were to the benefit of the incident,” he said.

“We would always be cautious of the public to start intervening with fires. Our guidance is always to stand back and wait for us to arrive.

“We are very grateful for those people that did turn up and support us. It gave us a successful resolution a lot quicker.”

An investigation has found that the most probable cause was due to self-heating hay and straw stored in the barn.

Crews from Carlisle, Brampton, Longtown, Wigton and Gretna attended and an aerial appliance was also called out to the scene.

Firefighters were on scene for more than 13 hours and returned every few hours until 8am on Monday.