The resident of a North Vancouver home that caught fire is expressing profound gratitude for the heroic actions of her neighbour.
At around 12:30 p.m. on Wednesday, Rachel Sinclair said she and her partner were returning home from running errands when they saw smoke billowing up from their address on the 300 block of East Fifth Street.
Sinclair and her partner ran to the home and found their neighbour in the kitchen, where the smoke was coming from, she said.
“She was yelling ‘Fire! Fire! Where is where is your other dog?'” Sinclair said.
Her neighbour had hit her burning stove with fire extinguishers, and had recovered one of their dogs, she said. But her pug and two cats were still inside.
“So we went running in. My partner went upstairs to find the cats,” Sinclair said. “The smoke was [thick]. You couldn't see the stairs. You could not see anything.”
Her partner recovered the cats and, with some difficulty, Sinclair found her pug – who has black fur.
While the pets were rescued from the home, some of the humans suffered from smoke inhalation. The neighbour received treatment on scene. Sinclair said she was taken to hospital in an ambulance, where she remained for around 10 hours getting treatment for her injuries.
When firefighters arrived on the scene before 1 p.m., the neighbour approached them to say there was a fire that she put out with an extinguisher.
“They deployed lines, they went in. There was still fire in there but they didn’t need a main line to get it out,” said Assistant Fire Chief Tyler Lentsch.
“So they just got their wet water extinguishers out to minimize the damage,” he said.
Neighbour saved home and animals, resident says
Things could have gone a lot worse if the neighbour hadn’t detected the fire and acted quickly with her fire extinguishers.
“If that lady didn’t do what she did, it wouldn’t have been as good as an outcome,” Lentsch said.
While the woman acted bravely in recovering the pets, you should generally leave rescue operations to the professionals, he said.
“We definitely commend her efforts, but don’t want anyone necessarily doing that,” Lentsch said.
Investigators will be on scene Thursday to finalize their efforts to determine a cause, he said.
As she recovers from burns and irritation in her throat and esophagus, Sinclair is expressing thanks to her neighbour.
“I’m extremely grateful,” she said. “Our neighbour genuinely saved our home, our animals.”
“The fire would have went straight through the wall and into our upstairs and the house would have been on fire,” Sinclair said.
But even more important to her is that her cats and dogs are safe.
“They’re my whole world,” she said.
This article has been amended with an account from the resident of the home that caught fire.
