Brother and sister die in fire

SASKATOON — Bruce Wolverine can’t get the sound of his niece crying for help out of his head.

Natalia Wolverine, 24, and her 10-year-old brother Jarome died Sunday night in a house fire on the English River First Nation.

Bruce said he crawled down the hallway of the burning house looking for his niece and nephew.

“I went in there. I had no mask, no nothing. I walked in the hallway and I looked around. I couldn’t find nobody. I started yelling. Then I heard my niece yelling, and I didn’t know where it was coming from. Then it just stopped. I was out of air, then I crawled back out again for air.”

He said he heard Natalia yell “Help me” three times.

“I wanted to come back in again, but my daughter stopped me,” he said.

The smoke was too thick, and too dark, for him to find anyone in the house.

He didn’t hear a smoke detector sounding, he said.

According to RCMP, the blaze consumed the house in the 100 block of Mink Avenue in Patuanak, which is on the English River First Nation, about 500 kilometres northwest of Saskatoon.

Although the First Nation has a fire department, and firefighters arrived on scene quickly, they couldn’t get water flowing from the truck in time, Bruce said.

The boy’s parents were at a wake for an elder when the blaze began, English River Chief Marie Black said.

“It’s just so unbearable,” Black said of the tragedy.

The boy’s father cut a hole in the side of the house with a power saw when he got there, Bruce said.

They found the siblings together in a bedroom.

RCMP said community members took both to the local health centre, where they were pronounced dead. Autopsies are scheduled in Saskatoon later this week. A fire investigator has arrived from Saskatoon to look into the cause of the fire, Black said.

Black said the loss of young lives in the close-knit family has hurt the community of about 740 people.

“We’re so in disbelief,” she said.