FIREFIGHTERS saved a teenage girl's life when they found her unconscious and choking on her own vomit.

Firefighters from Farnworth, who were responding to an automatic fire alarm, discovered the drunken 15-year-old in Minerva Road, Farnworth at 3.15am on Saturday.

Station officer Paul Starling said: "It was a disturbing incident. She couldn't breathe and would have died. We put her in the recovery position, cleared her airways and put her on a respirator.

"She didn't react at all to us but was breathing. She was a very, very lucky girl. I have never seen anyone so inebriated.

"There was a bottle of White Lightning next to her, but that might have contained anything.

"The message has got to go out that, whatever she'd been drinking or taken, people have to be so careful with alcohol. The conditions were very cold and anything could have happened to her."

The girl, who has not been named, was recovering at the Royal Bolton Hospital.