Saskatoon man honoured for alerting woman to house fire

SASKATOON If it wasn’t for Evan Pyra’s quick thinking, a Saskatoon woman may be dead.

Pyra, 26, was welcomed into the Saskatoon fire department family on Friday when he was presented with a Citizen of Merit award for notifying a neighbour living above him that the house in which they resided was on fire. A trained nurse, Pyra said all of his training “went out the window” when he realized the house was ablaze.

“A lot of it just came down to dumb luck,” said the 26-year-old Pyra, who lives in a separate suite.

He had gone to his car on Tuesday around 7:30 a.m. to get a phone charger when he smelled fire and saw smoke billowing from the main floor of the home. That’s when he went around to the front of the Fourth Street East residence and found his neighbour inside.

“She was just panicked and kind of frozen and talking about going back in to get some more of her stuff. And I just kept telling her: ‘It’s not worth it. It’s just stuff,’” Pyra said.

Putting his arm around the woman and leading her to safety, Pyra said he knocked on his neighbour’s door for help. They used his neighbour’s cellphone and emergency responders soon arrived on scene.

Saskatoon fire Chief Morgan Hackl said it was because Pyra remained calm and collected that he was able to use that “short-window of safety ” to alert his neighbour to the blaze.

“He allowed us to have a success story from this incident,” Hackl said.

The woman needed immediate medical attention due to smoke inhalation. Investigators say the fire was accidental, starting from an unattended candle.