A WOMAN believes she is lucky to be alive after part of her kitchen ceiling collapsed. Rose Barrett (pictured) was in her kitchen on Sunday night when rubble and dust came crashing down on the sink and drainingboard in her rented home in Church Street, Ebbw Vale.

Now the mother-of-two, who is also looking after her sister's four children, has had to move into makeshift accommodation.

She said: "I could have died because I was at the sink just a few seconds earlier, washing up some dishes.

"The rubble that came crashing down was heavy enough to bend the taps on the sink sideways.

"It fell over the kitchen area, and the room was instantly filled with this terrible earthy smell from the collapsed beam and the dust." The kitchen also flooded in the collapse, which Ms Barrett says was caused by dry rot. Ms Barrett added: "It was lucky that some of my kids had just left the kitchen and had gone into the living-room, where they were waiting for a cup of tea." She and fianc Shaun Durham say they will now have to approach Blaenau Gwent council for a house.

In the meantime they are having to stay at his three- bedroom house in Milton Close, Ebbw Vale.

Ms Barrett, originally from the North East of England, came to live in Ebbw Vale two years ago with her two children, Matthew and Gemma Williams, 13 and 11.

She also cares for her nieces and nephews, Sinan Mehmet, 14, Yusaf Mehmet, 12, Suleyman Mehmet, 11, and Destine Mehmet, ten.

Landlord Wayne Baker, of Mount Street, Ebbw Vale, said: "I'm very annoyed about all the fuss that has been caused because it was an unforeseen accident that can happen when you have an old property.

"How was I to know that the lintel in the ceiling was infected with dry rot?" Mr Baker said the problem had been made worse by the tenants because a shower curtain in the bathroom, which is directly above the kitchen, had been removed, causing water to seep through the floorboards and into the lintel.