3 Miracles rolled into 1 fire rescue
Published: December 10, 2004
Fire hero Rick Nielsen helped rescue a senior from her blazing apartment after spotting flames reflected off a neighbouring building and realizing his building was alight. “I heard the fire alarm going off, but that happens and there’s no fire,” said the 24-year-old, of the 10 p.m. Monday blaze at 16194 121 St.
“Then I looked out of the window and saw the reflection of the flames coming off another building; I ran to the front and got a fire extinguisher and then down to the hallway to the lady’s apartment.”
Nielsen, a welder, said he wasn’t sure what he was going to find in the ground-floor apartment.
“The hall was clear as day, no smoke or anything,” he said.
“But I opened the lady’s door and I couldn’t see anything because of the smoke. I could hear the lady coughing.”
Nielsen said he could barely see the woman who lives in the apartment through the smoke.
“She had a blanket wrapped around her and she was trying to put out the flames.
“I decided we’d better get out. It was getting way too hot and there was no way a little fire extinguisher was going to control the fire.”
Nielsen said the woman was trying to grab her belongings before she left her suite.
“I said, ‘Just let it go man,’ ” recalled Nielsen. “I told her we didn’t have time. She was coughing. I was coughing.”
Nielsen said he didn’t know much about the woman in the apartment.
Another neighbour, Pauline Price, said she knew the woman only as Shirley.
“She sat in my car until her family came to get her,” said 48-year-old Price. “She said that she was in her bedroom when her dog roused her. But when she got up, she gave the dog heck because she didn’t see anything.
“But the dog started barking again and when she came back out she saw the fire.”
Price arrived home shortly after the fire began and said she was surprised how quickly it spread into the first and second floor apartments above the woman’s suite.
Emergency response department spokesman Karen Carlson said the cause of the fire is still under investigation but it started on the patio of the woman’s apartment.
“It is being treated as accidental, and the cost of the damage is estimated at around $400,000,” she added.
Work had already begun yesterday on repairing the three suites badly damaged by the fire.
The fire left four people temporarily homeless.
Neighbours at Suncourt Apartments have set up a trust fund with Alberta Treasury Branches to help the four. Donations can be made to the Suncourt Apartments Fire Relief Fund.
Nielsen is modest about his role in the drama.
“I coughed a couple of times when I got out and that was it. I think anyone would have done the same thing, really.”
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