The fire’s cause is being looked into, but it’s not thought to be suspicious. fire departmen
When Dwayne Bourassa and Roger McCallum left English River Dene Nation last month to go to North Battleford because wildfires were getting close, they didn’t expect to find fires in the city, let alone save people’s lives. They did, though.
Around 4 a.m. CST on Tuesday, the two security guards, along with their coworkers Ethan Maurice and Edwin Gunn, were going from hotel to hotel to check on the safety of people who had fled wildfires. About a kilometer away, they saw smoke.
“I just said, ‘Let’s go,’ and it’s a good thing that we did,” Bourassa told CBC News.
He said that when they got to the scene on 99th Street, they saw an old man walking back and forth in front of the house, and his wife, who had trouble walking, was inside trying to find her walker in the thick smoke.
“He was wandering around like he didn’t know what to do first, so Roger and I went up to him and said, “Hey, mister, move your van across the road and we’ll take care of your wife.” Bourassa told what happened.
They did it. Both men put their arms around the old woman and led her to safety across the street.
McCallum, who is from La Plonge, remembered, “We couldn’t see anything; it was just pure black smoke.”
“When I got to the other side of the road, I could hardly breathe, so I couldn’t even imagine how that older lady felt.”
Minutes later, people came to help. When North Battleford deputy fire chief Paul Perry got there, he saw flames coming out of the roof of the house.
He said that the fire was put out in about two hours.
Perry said that the fire probably started outside and went up the outside walls of the house to the attic.
He said that from a structural and insurance point of view, it’s probably a total loss. But it’s likely that some things inside the house can be saved.
Even though the cause of the fire is still being looked into, he said that it is not being looked at as suspicious.
Perry praised the security guards for their quick thinking and help before his fire crews arrived on scene.
“Many people would have seen the smoke and thought, ‘Oh, there’s something.'” “It’s not often that people want to help people who are in trouble,” he said.
“Without a doubt, those gentlemen helped save that couple’s lives.”
When Bourassa thought about how bad things could have gotten if he and his team hadn’t been there, he was moved to tears.
“It’s kind of surreal when you think about it, but it feels good,” he said through sniffles.
“I just hope that more people out there, if they experience the same thing, will react the same way we did.”