Thirteen flee as fire spreads next door
When Jason Narayan heard glass shattering outside his open bedroom window early Monday, followed by screams, he knew something was wrong.
He bolted down the stairs and out the front door to find flames shooting through the roof of his aunt and uncle’s house, located on the same Mill Woods cul-de-sac where Narayan and his family live.
“I was panicking, screaming ‘Someone help me,’ screaming the loudest I’ve ever screamed,” Narayan said Monday morning, standing outside the destroyed house at 41st Street and 29th Avenue. “I was worried my family was being burned alive.”
Fire investigators spent Monday examining the charred remains of the house where two families lived.
All nine people inside escaped safely after a fire broke out about 1:30 a.m., as did four more people who fled a heavily damaged neighbouring house.
The cause of the fire is still under investigation.
Inside the burning house, Narayan’s aunt Asmin Atique and her husband were also screaming, trying to wake their two daughters, Alisha, 22, and Shazleen, 24.
The aunt woke to the sound of shattering glass and initially thought someone was breaking into the house.
“I woke up my husband to see what was happening,” Atique said.
As they moved down the hallway to investigate the noise that came from the front of the house, they saw flames.
“The fire was huge, coming through the windows,” she said.
Atique, her husband, their two daughters and their daughter’s boyfriend escaped out the back of the house.
“I didn’t know what was happening,” said Alisha Atique, who remembers running through thick smoke to safety. “It didn’t really hit me that the house was on fire until I stepped outside and saw it.”
Narayan’s frantic screams woke a neighbour and the two used a garden hose to spray the house.
Atique’s husband banged on the basement windows, alerting four people living in the basement suite to the fire.
Next door, Trina Oommen, 25, was awake and working on her computer when she saw a red glow outside her bedroom window.
“I stood up and saw fire bursting out of the front entrance of the neighbour’s house,” she said.
Oommen called 911 and escaped the house with her brother, sister and dad. The Oommens’ house was heavily damaged by the fire.
Kevin Bureau, fire investigator, said crews received a call at 1:26 a.m. and arrived to find a fully involved structure fire.
At the height of the blaze, 30 firefighters were on scene.
Bureau said no one suffered major injuries.
“They’re very fortunate,” Bureau said.
On Monday, green fencing was erected around the Atique house as investigators worked on the scene.
While four birds were found alive in the basement suite, Atique said her family’s cat, Lexus, is still missing.
“All our memories are gone. We couldn’t grab anything,” Atique said. The family has lived in the house since they built it 19 years ago.
Atique said the basement tenants, a man and his pregnant wife and the man’s parents, who recently moved from Pakistan, did not have insurance.
Damage to the two houses is estimated at $1.2 million.