REGINA – Firefighters have responded to ten fires in apartment-style buildings this year with one of the most significant blazes tearing through 23-units on Parliament Avenue.
Godwin Iyekepolor feels lucky to be alive when he thinks back to that day on January 9: “I was almost dead. Almost dead.”
He was sleeping and his wife was watching TV, when smoke began to billow in their door.
“The only way out was through the window. We cannot go through the door because the smoke was building up.”
He smashed the window with his fist as firefighters rescued the pair from their third floor apartment: “It’s like life and death, so fear was completely out. You just have to climb out.”
Nearly two months later, Iyekepolor and his wife are still struggling to come to grips with all they lost. Their greatest difficulty is replacing important travel and academic documents.
“Sometimes I feel like crying. I hold it back. Life must go on but it’s really not easy.”
Red Cross is typically one of the first organizations on scene to help following a disaster and workers see people express a broad range of emotions.
“Everything from fear to disbelief, it’s not happening to me, to panic, loss of control, anxiety,” said Dave Kyba, the planning and response coordinator with Red Cross Saskatchewan. “All these sorts of emotions come to play.”
Regina Fire responded to ten working fires in multi-family occupancy buildings in January and February, which is slightly above the average of eight.
“It’s not overly unusual,” said Randy Ryba, fire marshal for Regina Fire and Protective Services. “But again, winter does play into this on occasion. There’s just extra things that may happen in respect to supplemental heating or your furnace running too long.”
The Parliament Avenue building remains cordoned off with a security guard on scene.
Boardwalk Rentals told Global News it applied for a demolition permit and the building will likely be brought down with everything inside.
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