Five Montreal firefighters have been honoured for their heroic responses to a deadly five-alarm blaze that killed seven people last year.
They put themselves in grave danger, and managed to save several lives as an Old Montreal building was engulfed in flames on March 16, 2023.
“That’s what we train for and that’s what we live for, actually,” said 38-year-old firefighter Keith Brown.
Brown, Julien Berjot and Claude Smith were among the dozens of members of the Montreal Fire Department who ran straight toward the danger just before 6 a.m. that day.
When they arrived, they could see three people at windows on the second floor with flames at their backs. They didn’t hesitate.
“Stress went through the roof,” said Brown. “But that’s what we trained for. We’re used to it. That’s what we do.”
With portable ladders, they start climbing up through the thick smoke.
Berjot and Brown helped two people down. One of them was bleeding profusely, because the windows wouldn’t open and occupants had to break them to get out.
“As I looked up, I got blood in my eyes. We got two people down from the ladder,” said Berjot, 29.
The two of them got onto an aerial ladder controlled by Claude Smith, a 40-year veteran of the force.
Another man in a window desperately jumped toward the ladder while it was still four feet from the building, and ended up dangling in the air high above the ground.
“You can imagine there was a lot of smoke and stuff, and we’re holding him up,” said Brown. He and Berjot pulled the man up onto the ladder, saving his life.
Brown dislocated his shoulder in the process, but continued fighting the fire for another two hours.
“I kept working, but then I had three weeks off,” he explained.
The 61-year-old Smith then maneuvered them away from the building moments before the flames flashed up.
“I couldn’t see anything through the smoke,” Smith recounted, crediting the officers who guided him with clear instructions.
Last Sunday, Berjot and Brown were honoured with the Cross of Courage at a ceremony in Quebec City.
Claude Smith, Benoit Bourgie and Kevin Graindlair-Laroche received the Meritorious Service Medal.
The group saved five lives.
“We were pleased. It’s a nice honour to have. But then again, I would have given the medals to every guy that was there because everyone was working their asses off. But it was a nice gesture,” said Brown.
Seven people died in the blaze that night. Firefighters saved nine, and are at peace with the thought they did everything they possibly could. It was the most intense moment of all their careers, and they said they think about it regularly. The ceremony brought back a flurry of emotions.
“A lot of people told us that this call was going to be once in a lifetime, and as we’ve seen the last few days, it happened again,” said Brown, referring to another major fire in a building with the same owner that killed a mother and daughter earlier this month.
Many questions remain about what happened that morning in 2023 but one thing is for sure: the firefighters who responded to it are heroes.