Neighbours rushed to help a woman after her East Vancouver house was engulfed in flames Tuesday night.
The woman managed to escape the fire, but it wasn’t long before she ran back inside to try and save her dog.
The fire broke out at a home in the area of East 12th Ave. and St. Catherines St.
Neighbours said they could hear and feel explosions, with some seeing flames at around 11:30 p.m.
Matthew Hawrysh said he was winding down for the night when he heard a woman screaming outside.
“So I ran down and I yelled, ‘The girl’s on fire, the girl’s on fire!’ and me and one other guy ran across the house. She was going back in the house. We pulled her out of the house. She tried to go back in for her dog.”
The tenant ran back inside the house one more time in a desperate attempt to rescue her dog.
Sadly, the dog, a one-and-a-half-year-old husky cross named Moon, could not be saved.
WATCH: Dog lost in East Vancouver
“Dogs are family,” Kieran Ruck, Moon’s owner, said. “She was my family.”
Hawrysh downplayed the fact he ran into a burning home to help a stranger.
“When I saw and heard the girl screaming, there was no other option. Someone was screaming, right? You had to help them.”
The cause of the fire is still under investigation.
A GoFundMe page has been set up to support the people who lived in the home.
The page had raised more than $17,000 as of Wednesday night.
— With files from Rumina Daya