A couple were forced to flee their Norwich flat after smoke filled the ground floor of their building.

A 23-year-old, who did not want to be named, said he was installing a wardrobe in his Ethel Road apartment on Friday (August 24) when he heard the fire alarm go off.

He opened his door to see what was going on and saw a 'sheet of smoke' at the bottom of the stairs.

'My first thought was to just run,' he said. 'And so I got my girlfriend out of the building and called the fire service.

'It was really weird because the fire service was struggling to find the source of the fire.

'They believed it was an electrical fire.'

He said no one was else was in the building at the time.

Fire crews from Carrow, Sprowston and Earlham were called to the property, in the Thorpe Hamlet area of the city, shortly after 3.30pm.

They used hose reel jets to extinguish the fire and left the scene at 4.20pm, a fire service spokesman said.