A 12-year-old girl fell 14 floors down a chimney in an apartment block in New York and amazingly survived. Her life was saved by a pile of soot at the bottom.

Grace Bergere had taken a visiting cousin on the roof top to show him the beautiful view of the Hudson River. Unfortunately, the little girl fell through the chimney but only suffered a light hip injury after she landed in 2ft (60cm) of soot in the basement furnace of the building in the West Village area. The building's janitor told reporters that he was glad that he hadn’t had the chimney swept.

The girl’s father described his daughter’s survival as an "absolute miracle". The incident occurred on Thursday night, fire officials said. The girl climbed up a 25ft (7.6m) ladder alongside the large brick chimney in order to reach the building’s highest point, but when she did it she fell into the chimney.

Her visiting cousin rushed back into the apartment building and called emergency services which woke up the janitor to get access to the boiler room.

"I think she probably went down head first and landed on her back," fire Lt Simon Ressner said.

Firefighters were very surprise when they opened the door at the bottom of the chimney and found little Grace’s hand poking out of the soot. They were expecting to find her dead.

"She was covered in soot. She was black all over," the janitor Angelo Guagenti told the New York Daily News.