THEY were among the first to go inside a blazing Southampton tower block while residents were rescued all around them.

Wearing specialist breathing apparatus, firefighters Alan Bannon and James Shears had made it inside the ninth floor flat of Shirley Towers where a fire, started by curtains being left on a lamp, was raging.

But “a sudden, massive escalation”

of the temperature, which reached “hundreds of degrees”

left the two experienced firefighters overcome and unconscious on the floor of the bedroom area, an inquest heard.

The hearing was told how it wasn’t initially clear that the two friends, who were part of Red Watch at St Mary’s fire station, were missing.

They were trapped inside the building for around 45 minutes as their fellow firefighters attempted to reach them but were beaten back by heat and smoke.

Eventually, at 9.40pm – an hourand- a-half after the initial 999 call reporting the fire on the night of Tuesday, April 6, 2010 – the two men were found and brought out of the Church Street tower block where Mr Bannon, from Bitterne, Southampton, was pronounced dead at the scene.

Mr Shears, from Poole, died a short time later at Southampton General Hospital.

The inquest jury was told how dad-of-one Mr Bannon, 38, and dad-of-two Mr Shears, 35, were one of two teams of firefighters who had gone inside Flat 72 that night, using the call sign Red Two. It was likely they had been overcome by the heat by around 9pm at the latest.

Redbridge firefighters Keith Holland and Liam Ryan, using the call sign Red One, had only just been able to leave the flat via some stairs. Both were in “some pain and physical distress” and one of the pair had become briefly trapped by fallen cabling, and there was nothing more either could have done, coroner Keith Wiseman said.

He went on to describe how any delay in recovering Mr Bannon and Mr Shears was unlikely to have made any difference to the outcome because of its intensity.

The inquest heard how the fire had broken out in the split-level flat which was home to Karl and Kirsty Hoffman and their child.

Mr Hoffman had hitched a curtain up on top of a lamp while he vacuumed, while his partner later turned on the switch.

The pair initially smelled burning but thought it was coming from elsewhere in the block.

When Mr Hoffman realised he used a bottle of soft drink and then the polo shirt he was wearing to try and put out the fire, the inquest heard.

But the fire intensified and they fled and a neighbour called 999.

The jury was given a demonstration of the equipment the men were using when they died, including the breathing apparatus and the clothes they were wearing.

Nigel Cooper, a firefighter of 21 years, said he had undergone heat training which determined how long they could tolerate temperatures before it was declared too hot.

He said firefighters would be aware of the heat when entering a fire scene, feeling it particularly on areas like their shoulders and knees.

The inquest is expected to last four weeks.

Proceeding.