Fire broke out at a west Edmonton apartment building at 155th Street and 104th Avenue around 8:30am Wednesday morning.
Vanessa, a tenant and young mother grabbed her baby boy and tried to escape, but found the stairwell thick with smoke. She returned to her suite and smashed out a window with a chair and then dropped her son into the arms of a waiting stranger. The baby was not injured.
"I was thinking about my mom being a firefighter in Vancouver,” Vanessa said.”All the stories she used to tell me when I was younger about people dying in fires and I thought, ‘That’s not going to be me.’ “
Another family who escaped from the fire waited outside as one of their three cats was treated by firefighters for smoke inhalation. The three cats are now fine.
At one point residents on the third floor of the building pushed a mattress out the window intending to jump to safety, all of the residents were able to escape without jumping.
The fire reportedly started in a suite on the second floor. Flames could be seen shooting out a second floor window by our Global 1 helicopter. The fire was reportedly contained to one suite, but according to firefighters, there is likely smoke and water damage to the rest of the building.
Fourteen residents took refuge from the cold on city busses. The Red Cross has been called in to help.
With files from The Edmonton Journal
Comments