An inquest heard they were called out to a blaze at Linda Parkes’ home and found every room filled with rubbish
Firefighters took three days to find an obsessive hoarder, whose body was buried beneath 3ft of debris.
An inquest heard they were called out to a blaze at 59-year-old Linda Parkes’ home and found every room filled with rubbish.
Along with police officers they had to squeeze through gaps in the waste and crawl over bags of human excrement, rotting food and rodent droppings to get to Linda.
Her appalling living conditions prompted the coroner to call for councils to get powers to enter the homes of obsessive hoarders.
David Paul, the station manager, told the Derby hearing: “Access to the building was very restricted. We had to crawl through the top of the doorways to get in the rooms.
“The living room was a solid mess, you’d just be crawling and your back would be touching the ceiling. In the kitchen, the mass was about 5ft deep.
"There was rubbish bags, human excrement in carrier bags, rotting food and rodent droppings.”
The fire last January started in the kitchen of Linda’s Derby home after waste near the oven fell on to a lighted hob.
A postmortem showed she died of smoke inhalation.
Recording a verdict of death by misadventure, the coroner said: “Local authorities should have the power to enter a house if they... believe hoarding is going on, that poses a fire risk.”
