Kyle Williams’ regular workday consists of building gear boxes for the mining industry, but last week he tried his hand at firefighting.
The Queensborough resident had dropped off his son at middle school after an orthodontist’s appointment, when he passed by a house and noticed smoke and flames.
“I never take that route. For some reason I went that way. I drove past this house and noticed some smoke,” said Williams, who pulled over and ran toward the house. “I started yelling and banging on the windows.”
As Williams ran toward the house, he saw two upstairs residents who were unaware of what was happening below and alerted them to the fire.
“They saw me park and run toward the house. I was yelling at them, ‘Get out of the house!’” he said. “It is a bit of a blur. It’s a lot to take in.”
They told him there was a family sleeping downstairs and he continued to bang on windows to awaken them.
“The fire was out of hand. I grabbed the garden hose. It didn’t work,” he said. “I booted in the garage carport door.”
The family heard the commotion and got out of the house. Another man joined Williams in getting a hose from a neighbour’s house and spraying water on the fire, but they stepped back as it was getting too much for a garden hose.
“Once the van started catching on fire, the smoke was starting to get very thick,” he said, noting firefighters soon arrived. “It was probably about five minutes, but it felt like forever.”
Deputy Fire Chief John Hatch said the fire occurred in a home on Howes Street just after 11 a.m. on Wednesday, April 22. He said the home’s occupants had gone outside by the time firefighters arrived so they did an “aggressive fire attack” and quickly had the fire under control.
“It was extensively damaged on the carport exterior side and then the lower basement area adjacent to the carport was extensively damaged inside the house,” Hatch said. “There were no injuries reported at the time.”
According to Hatch, fire damaged about 20 per cent of the house, but the entire house suffered smok, and water damage.
“The fire was venting out the lower living area windows on the front of the house, as well as the carport and the van, which was located in the carport. It was also involved in the fire,” he said. “They had to combat the fuels that were in the vehicle, as well as a storage (unit) in the carport that contained gasoline fuels, as well as the fire that was inside the structure itself.”
The city’s emergency support services team attended the fire scene to assist families displaced by the blaze.
Williams said he later learned that one of the occupants was a good friend of his son. He said all of the residents were appreciative of his efforts to get them out of the house.
New Westminster police and fire departments are currently investigating the cause of the structure fire.
“It appears to have started in the rear carport area vicinity of the house,” Hatch said. “We are not sure of the cause yet. Everybody got out safe – that’s the main thing.”
