Neighbour saves pair from Melbourne fire

An off-duty police officer has kicked down a fence to help a woman and her elderly mother escape a ferocious fire at their Melbourne home.

The pair couldn't open a locked gate at the Essendon home to escape when the blaze broke out around 8.30pm on Sunday.

But their neighbour ran down a side lane to a back fence to help them to flee to safety.

"Dad ran around the back and kicked down the fence so they could get out the back," the daughter of the policeman, who didn't want to be identified, told the Herald Sun.

"There was smoke everywhere, black smoke and huge, huge flames. The powerlines were sparking and then they fell down and people were almost walking into them."

The fire, which took firefighters 70 minutes to bring under control, destroyed the single-story weatherboard Essendon home on Sunday night, the MFB said.

The roof of the house collapsed and investigators will inspect the site on Monday.

The family had reportedly lived in the home for 46 years.

A firefighter suffered a slight electric shock, but went back to fighting the blaze after being checked out by paramedics.