CALGARY – Mike Francis didn’t need to think twice Sunday before running toward a gas station where a minivan had plowed into a pump and sparked a blaze in Calgary’s busy Beltline.
“I made the decision to pull a U-turn, go back and make sure everyone was OK,” he said.
The 23-year-old security guard was driving to work when he saw a gold van strike a pump at the Shell gas station at 17th Avenue and 5th Street S.W.
The pump burst into flames, enveloping the van, he said, adding he immediately pulled over to call 911 and then turned his car around to head back to the scene.
While waiting for fire crews to arrive, Francis said he saw the driver pulling her two young children out of the rear passenger door.
After taking them to the 7-Eleven store across the street, she tried to return to her vehicle, but Francis stopped her.
“I told her, ‘You need to go across the street, it’s not safe, it’s going to explode,’ ” he said, adding the woman was “hysterical.”
When Francis spotted a Shell employee standing close to the flames, he shouted at him to get away from the scene and to find a way to shut off the pumps.
Soon after, a series of three or four explosions about 15 seconds apart rocked the station, sending flames three metres high into the air, he said.
Nearby resident Jeremy Dutton was walking to the convenience store for a coffee when he saw a crowd gathering to watch the fire. He didn’t realize it had been sparked by a vehicle until he saw the pump knocked over on its side.
“At first I thought it was a propane tank on fire. There was a boom, something blew up, you could hear it from inside the store,” said the 33-year-old, adding the flames were blackening the gas station canopy.
He said he saw the driver with her kids in the store, adding the woman was sobbing and store clerks gave her a chair to sit on.
Fire crews arrived and doused the flames in a matter of minutes, said duty inspector Darren Cave of the Calgary Police Service, adding both vehicle and pedestrian traffic were temporarily rerouted.
The gas station was evacuated as crews shut down the pumps.
The motorist and her two children, about six and 12 years old, were able to get out of the vehicle unharmed, a fire department official said.
There was no word on what caused the woman to drive into the pump, but Francis said he overheard her saying there may have been a problem with her brakes.
Francis’s quick thinking have some calling him a hero, but the recent graduate of Mount Royal University’s criminal justice program said he was just doing what felt natural.
“I want to follow in my grandfather’s footsteps and become a cop, and you just put everyone before yourself no matter what.”
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