People living in the northeast Calgary neighbourhood of Taradale are in mourning after two people were killed in a house fire early Thursday morning.
Fire crews responded to the house on Taralake Way, just after 1:15 a.m. after neighbours called 911.
“I was almost about to go to sleep,” said Zubar Hanif. “I was on my bed, and my wife, she went to the washroom and she came out and saw from our window — their kitchen is on that side — she saw some of the flames coming out of the kitchen (of the neighbour’s home).”
“There was a lot of fire from this structure, coming out the main floor and the second storey,” said Scott Cowan, a battalion chief with the Calgary Fire Department.
“Flames were pushing out to both sides of the structure and impinging on the houses on either side of the structure. Crews were very quick getting water on that fire to prevent the houses on either side from igniting.”
Neighbours said there were a total of six people living in the home that was destroyed: a family of four — originally from the Punjab region of India — who lived in the main part of the house, and a couple with no children, who lived in the basement.
“Two people had apparently evacuated from the basement suite without injury,” said CFD Information Officer Carol Henke. “A woman and a 16-year-old managed to get out a window of the second floor and were stuck on a little roof area above the deck. They were rescued by fire crews.”
“Sadly, when fire crews went inside to do a search to extinguish the fire, they found an adult male deceased and then also found a nine-year-old girl upstairs. They quickly brought out and transferred her care to EMS, who transported her to the hospital. Sadly she couldn’t make it.”
“I think it’s one of the most horrible nights of my life,” said Hanif, who kicked in the door of the house to try to help the people inside escape the flames. “There was huge smoke, black smoke inside.”
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“I heard the noise of a lady upstairs –she was in her bedroom with her husband. One of the kids was in the other room — she was screaming. At the same time we saw that the fire department came. So they just went inside (and) they told us not to go in.”
Neighbours identified the victims as 50-year-old Sunny Gil and his 9-year-old daughter Hargun. His wife, Sukhi and their 16-year-old son, Rohanpreet, survived.
Hanif, struggling to hold back his tears, described the family very friendly and very nice.
“She was always playing here in front of our garage (or) in front of our door and comes to our house for candies and stuff like that,” he said of the little girl.
“They call her Guddi Guddi. Guddi means a baby. You know, in Asian areas like in Pakistan and India, when you have a small daughter, we all call her a Guddi — like a doll. So she was very pretty and very nice to everybody — friendly — and everybody called her a Guddi Guddi doll.”
“It’s shocking news to all of us, especially when you’ve lost a life. Accidents happen in your life, and you can get a replacement of those things. But there is no replacement when you lose a life.”
Speaking through her tears, another neighbour said the news has been very hard on the community.
“We ‘re still kind of processing it,” said Sandy Hansra.
She described the woman who escaped as a hard worker who held down two jobs to support her family.
“We saw her jumping from the window last night with her son and wondering where her daughter was,” added Hansra. “She was in bare feet and she was holding the hands of firefighters and looking for help and asking for her daughter. Then we saw her taken in the blankets covered — and the son was walking and he’s all shocked.” .
“We’re asking him, ‘Are you okay?’ He’s like, ‘I don’t know.’ It’s just too much to take.”
There’s no word on the cause of the fire, but investigators said it is not believed to be suspicious.
Late Friday morning, following news of the little girl’s death — her mother and her 16-year-old son, who both escaped the flames — returned to the scene of the fire where she was immediately embraced and comforted by a large group of family members, friends and neighbours.
“We will pray for all those who lost their lives and I will especially pray for the mother because she is going to face a whole life (of) pain,” said Hanif.
“We will pray for her that…she will be okay.”
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