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Neighbours help save three teens from burning home

Tuesday, August 7, 2012 - 1:58 PM
By Natasha Riebe
Cowichan Valley

Residents of Emma Way in North Cedar could be credited with saving the lives of three teenagers on Sunday morning.

A fire broke out at a home two doors’ down from Wendy and Eric Kennedy.

Kennedy said she and her husband heard a big bang at around 9:30 a.m.

“We had just sat down with our coffee and all of a sudden heard a loud noise,” Kennedy compared the sound to a huge jet taking off in their front yard.

They noticed smoke and she proceeded to call 911 while her husband went over to the house.

“He tried the door and luckily it was unlocked, so he just ran right in and started screaming.”

She said it seemed to take a while to wake up the two teenagers on the main level who were fast asleep and groggy.

“He was just yelling at them ‘Get out, get out, your house is on fire.' ”

Kennedy said another neighbour, Paul Amann, helped get a third teenager out of the basement.

The teenagers were shook up, she observed, but not injured. And she believes the outcome could have been much worse.

“If that had happened during the night, it wouldn’t have turned out the same,” she speculated. “You know, how hard it was to wake them (the teenagers) and of course the neighbours would have been asleep and nobody would have been on scene that quick.”

Fire Chief Percy Tipping said the blaze seems to have started at the back of the house and it is under investigation.

The big bang the Kennedys heard may have come from a BBQ propane tank, but Tipping said the tank likely didn’t explode, but rather, was venting.

Kennedy said it was a surreal experience and praised her husband for the role he played in waking up the teenagers and getting them out of the burning house.

“I’m very proud of what he did but I wasn’t too nervous because being a former firefighter, he has lots of experience and he knows what he’s doing,” she said.