5-year-old boy rescued from north Edmonton house fire

A five-year-old boy was taken to hospital Monday as a precaution, after being rescued from a house fire in north Edmonton.

According to Edmonton Fire Rescue Services, a mother and several children were able to escape but a five-year-old child was trapped in the house. He was rescued by firefighters.

The boy was “OK and in good shape,” but taken to hospital for precautionary measures, an EFRS spokesperson told Global News.

The fire was at 66 Street and 132 Avenue. The call came in at 4:35 p.m., crews arrived three minutes later and the fire was declared under control at 4:55 p.m.

Abrehet Gebreslassie said her six children had arrived home from school on Monday afternoon when the fire started. The kids are 16, eight, five, four, three and two years old.

“In the master bedroom, the door was closed but it was not locked. A little bit of smoke was coming through… the alarms were going off and my older daughter said: ‘There is smoke coming from your bedroom.’

“When I tried to take out my boy, I couldn’t find him. So I took all my other kids to my car… I put them in my car. My five-year-old boy, I couldn’t find him.

“All I was saying: ‘God, just make some miracle.’ I had no idea what to do. It was so hard to find him… smoke… I couldn’t even talk. I couldn’t even see. It was dark,” Gebreslassie told Global News.

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“I asked God to save my son. I was crying a lot.”

She said she had no words to explain how she was feeling in that moment, thinking the worst. She asked her daughter to call 911.

“They came right away. When they (put out) all the fire, my boy was OK.

“When I saw him and he is alive… ‘Oh, thank God.’

“I hugged a few of the firefighters and said thank you.”

Gebreslassie said firefighters found her son in an upstairs bedroom. He was hiding in the closet, she said.

“Everything burned in that bedroom except that small place that he was standing.

“His hair, his clothes: nothing was burned.”

She said they spent an hour or two at the hospital. Medical staff ran tests on her son and gave him some oxygen.