Heroic efforts help rescue two people from Saskatoon house fire

Two people were lucky to escape a house fire Monday morning thanks to the efforts of those nearby.

Mike Bohach was driving from work to an appointment and pulled onto Avenue D to find a sheltered part of the street to change.

He said he just happened to look to his right and saw a lot of black smoke coming up. At first, Bohach said he didn’t think anything of it but then noticed it getting thicker very quickly.

Deciding to investigate, Bohach ran a block over and saw the side of a house on fire.

“There’s no police, no sirens, no nothing,” Bohach said. “I stood there for a (second) and just tried computing everything.”

He called 911 but said he was told to wait for someone to take his call. Bohach then ran up to the front door of the house to knock and see if anyone was inside.

“The door swings open and there’s a little old lady standing there and I’m kind of in shock and she looked like she was kind of in shock, too,” he said.

Bohach said he told the woman they needed to get her out of the house. He took her to the grass and then the woman said her husband was still inside the house.

As Bohach approached the front door again, he noticed it had closed. He opened it to find the house filled with heavy smoke.

“It was like a wall …,” he said. “It was absolutely terrifying.”

Bohach crouched down and moved in a few steps, then saw a man on his hands and knees.

With his cellphone still in hand, Bohach said he grabbed the man to take him outside.

“I got through to 911 at some point,” Bohach said. “That part’s kind of blurry.”

He said he gave 911 the address and helped the man, who was only in a shirt and his underwear, out of the house.

“It’s crazy the things that stick with you … He looked awful — white, grey (and) sweating,” Bohach recalled. “(He was) in bad shape.”

Bohach also went back for two cats that the woman said were leashed on the porch of the home. He heard an explosion inside the home as he was retrieving the second feline, a blast which Bohach said “scared the crap out of me.”

The Saskatoon Fire Department said crews responding to the call at about 8:30 a.m., found the house was fully involved, with heavy black smoke coming from the roof.

A release from the department said power lines were down and arcing from the fire, and the natural gas line at the back of the home also was involved in the fire.

The department confirmed two people got out of the house, but an elderly man was taken to hospital for treatment of smoke inhalation.

Bohach said he felt badly for the man, as his own throat and lungs were hurting after breathing the smoke inside the house for only a few seconds.

Harvey Melstead, who lives two houses down from the house that was on fire, saw what happened.

“They were kind of choking up from the smoke,” Melstead said. “(There was) a lot of smoke and (it) still smells pretty bad in my neighbourhood.”

Once emergency services arrived, Bohach said he felt he’d done all he could, so he left and was able to still make his appointment.

It wasn’t until Bohach was laying in his Regina hotel room that evening that the full events of the day finally hit him.

“That was when I was really like, ‘Holy smokes. What just happened today?’ ” he said.

The cause of the fire has yet to be determined.

— With files from 650 CKOM’s Dallas Dahlseide and Libby Giesbrecht