Three men from Qormi have been praised as heroes after rescuing five people trapped in their smoke-filled homes on Wednesday evening.

The men, volunteers with Għaqda Armar San Sebastjan Ħal Qormi, a group dedicated to street feast decorations, acted swiftly when they saw the danger.

As they were dismantling decorations from the St Sebastian feast at around 6.45pm, they noticed smoke coming from a car parked between two houses on Main Street.

The car caught fire, producing a thick plume of smoke that soon engulfed the nearby houses and burnt down the wooden door of one of them.

One of the men, a 23-year-old, who said the volunteers wanted to remain unnamed, recounted the accident to Times of Malta.

“We did it out of a sense of civic duty and not for the praise,” he said.

The volunteers know the area well as they keep the decorations in a store on Main Street.

“When we got there, we saw the car on fire. The flames set fire to the wooden door of a house next to the store,” he said.

Suspecting there might be people in the houses, they climbed onto the roofs of the two houses using ladders and found three Italian residents in a small penthouse.

They guided the Italians to safety on the roof while one of the men attempted to extinguish the flames at street level.

The situation grew more urgent when they heard cries for help from a woman trapped on a balcony.

“That was when I panicked,” he recalled.

“I could barely breathe and I was on the roof.”

Despite the thick smoke, the volunteers managed to reach her and guide her to safety through an unlocked wooden door.

It turned out that she was asleep when the fire broke out and woke up when she heard crackling sounds.

Another woman from a neighbouring house was also rescued by the volunteers, who helped her climb onto a neighbouring roof.

The Civil Protection Department arrived soon after and extinguished the fire, with the police and medical teams providing assistance to those affected by smoke inhalation.

“As volunteers, the store is our second home. We are here daily, so the neighbours of the store are like our neighbours. We could not just stand there and do nothing,” the young volunteer said.

Their quick thinking and brave actions have been praised by Qormi residents, with one sharing an image of the blazing car on social media.