CHORLEY fire bosses are urging locals to install smoke alarms in their homes after a report revealed 67 per cent of lethal fires in Lancashire were in properties with no detectors.

The analysis of fire fatalities in homes in the last three years, issued this week by the Lancashire Fire and Rescue Service, revealed relatively few deaths in Chorley.

There were only three deaths per 100,000 people in the town, compared to 7.8 in Preston, 6.9 in Blackburn and 15.7 in Blackpool.

Despite the low figures, fire officers in Chorley urged residents to check they had working smoke alarms in their homes. A spokesman said: "We want to remind people that many fatal fires are easily preventable by installing smoke alarms and regularly checking and replacing batteries.

"Every year people are killed needlessly because they were not alerted to the fact that their home was on fire early enough to escape.

"It is tragic that these people should be dying when all they needed to do was spend a few pounds installing a smoke alarm."

There were a total of 63 recorded fire deaths in Lancashire between April 2000 and March 17 2003, and only nine per cent of these were in houses that had working smoke alarms.

Most fires were in terraced houses and more than twenty fatalities were caused by fires that started in the living or sitting room.

And 35 per cent of deaths were among the over 60s.

The spokesman added: "It seems that so many of these fires were caused by smoking materials so I would ask people not to smoke in bed or near soft furnishings and, if they do, to make sure they double check that their cigarettes are properly extinguished before they go out or retire to bed."