English River Dene Nation wildfire evacuees save couple from house fire in North Battleford | CBC News

When Dwayne Bourassa and Roger McCallum evacuated from English River Dene Nation to North Battleford due to encroaching wildfires last month, they didn’t expect to find flames in the city — let alone save lives. But they did.

Around 4 a.m. CST last Tuesday, while the pair — alongside their fellow security guards, Ethan Maurice and Edwin Gunn — was doing their overnight hotel rounds overseeing the safety of wildfire evacuees, they noticed smoke about a kilometre away.

“I just said, ‘Let’s go,’ and it’s a good thing we did,” Bourassa told CBC News. 

When they arrived at the scene on 99th Street, he said they found an elderly man pacing outside of the house and his wife, who has mobility issues, inside trying to find her walker within the thick smoke.

“He was wandering back and forth like he didn’t know what to do first, so we — Roger and I — approached him and said, ‘Hey mister, move your van across the road and we’ll take care of your wife,'” Bourassa recounted.

And they did. Both men locked arms with the elderly woman and helped her across the street to safety.

“We couldn’t see anything; it was just pure black smoke,” McCallum, who is from La Plonge, remembered.

“I could barely breathe once I got to the other side of the road, so I couldn’t even imagine how that older lady felt.”

Minutes later, emergency crews flocked to the scene — including North Battleford deputy fire chief Paul Perry, who arrived to find flames shooting out of the home’s roof.

The fire was put out in about two hours, he said.

Perry noted the blaze was presumably sparked outside and travelled up the exterior walls of the home into its attic.

From a structural and insurance standpoint, he said it’s likely a total loss. However, some items from inside the home are expected to be salvageable. 

While the cause of the fire is still under investigation, he confirmed that it’s not considered suspicious.

Perry praised the security guards for their quick thinking and help before his fire crews arrived on scene.

“A lot of people would have looked at the smoke and said, ‘Oh, there’s something.’ … It’s not an everyday thing that people want to help others in distress,” he said.

“Those gentlemen, without a doubt, helped to save that couple’s lives.”

While thinking of how the situation could have escalated had he and his colleagues not been there, Bourassa 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.”