A grandmother and five members of her family were taken to hospital this week after potentially-lethal levels of carbon monoxide gas were discovered in a property.

Firefighters were called to the council house in Park Road, Liskeard, on Wednesday evening by Cornwall Council which had informed them that a gas alarm was sounding.

Jean Julian, 61, her daughters Briony, Kirsty and Kerry, and her two-and-a-half-year-old grandson Archie Cameron, were all in the house when the alarm sounded around teatime.

Kacey Cameron was collected from Liskeard Cubs and also taken to Derriford Hospital for a check-up as she had spent time at her grandmother's house after school.

Mrs Julian said she had gone to bed early the night before feeling very unwell and the next day felt worse and didn't want to get up.

'My daughter Kerry helped me downstairs when she arrived and I spent the rest of the day sitting in a chair, not able to move because I felt so bad. I just wanted to sleep,' she said yesterday.

'When the gas alarm went off, we rang the Cornwall Council emergency out-of-hours helpline and they said they would be calling the fire brigade.

'They told us to open all the doors and windows and to leave the house which we did.

'When the fire brigade came, they took one look at me and phoned for an ambulance. They said I looked white as white.'

Mrs Julian added that without the gas alarm, she and two of her daughters, who live at home, would have gone to bed as usual.

'It would have been a different story today,' she said. 'We are thanking our lucky stars that we are still here. We would not have woken up today. Everyone must have a gas alarm. There is no choice. It saved our lives.'

A gas engineer was called to make the property's gas boiler safe.

Mrs Julian said that only on Monday the boiler was inspected as part of the council's yearly service and as far as she knew there were no problems.

The Cornish Times asked Cornwall Council for a statement regarding the incident but had not received a reply at the time of going to press.

Carbon monoxide is known as 'the silent killer'.