First responders could not have saved family

Inquest into the death of the Dunsmuirs began on the anniversary of their deaths, March 29, and ended Friday

Three years after Kevin, Jennifer, Robert and Cameron Dunsmuir died when their two-storey home in Sharon, Ont. caught fire, their house is being rebuilt.

But their loss, which devastated the tight-knit community in York Region, remains keenly felt still.

A foundation and annual hockey cup named for them raises money to help with the cost of registration and hockey equipment for young players in the community. The Dunsmuir memorial hockey tournament is held at the rink where the Dunsmuir boys played and coached.

“They were such great people,” says Alex Miles, who played hockey with Robert and helped found the Dunsmuir Dreams Foundation. “Kevin helped pay for players to play hockey when we were growing up . . . I think their legacy in the community is being kept alive by people like us who want to do good things and know that is the type of people they were.”

An inquest into two fatal house fires began on the anniversary of their deaths, March 29, and ended Friday, resulting in a series of non-binding recommendations aimed at preventing a similar tragedy from occurring in the future. The reports and testimony from the hearing shed some light on a tragedy that raised several questions including whether the response to the fire was appropriate.

It was early in the morning on Good Friday, 5:29 a.m. to be precise, when the 911 call came in.

“It’s a fire, I don’t know, I just woke up in the middle of the night, I need, I can’t see.”

The shaking voice belonged to Robert, 19. He and his younger brother Cameron, 15, and his parents were trapped in the second-floor master bedroom. Their dog was also in the house, he told the operator.

The fire had started in the laundry room on the main floor — linked to an improperly vented clothing dryer though it remains unclear how exactly it began.

There was no smoke detector on the main floor, and the one on the second floor did not go off — possibly because the wiring was damaged by the fire, or because it was not wired correctly.

By the time the family became aware of what was happening, it was too late to escape by the stairs.

“I can’t breathe,” Robert said on the 911 call, coughing. “We don’t know how (to get out) . . . We don’t have a plan or anything . . . we can’t see, it’s pitch black.”

When the firefighters arrived, smoke was being pressured from an upper floor window like a blowtorch, the inquest heard.

Perhaps, the inquest into their deaths heard, they could have escaped through the bedroom window.

But that would have meant leaving behind Jennifer who had had a stroke in 2010 and had mobility issues, the inquest heard.

“They likely scrambled to find a way they all could live,” the coroner’s counsel Frank Giordano told the jury of five women in his closing submissions. “They were found essentially together. It was a beautiful and horrible picture, portraying family love and tragic death at the same time.”

The oldest son David was away at Brock University at the time.

He delivered a eulogy at the joint funeral attended by more than 1000 people — family, friends and community members.

“Cameron, I wanted your life to become as big as your heart was,” he said. “Robert, I wanted to see you become the man you were destined to be. Mom, I wanted you to become as old as you were wise and loving. Dad, I wanted you to get everything that you gave to so many people.”

The Dunsmuir family did not attend the inquest or have representation. A family member contacted declined to comment.

The response time of the fire services — 12 minutes — was not challenged during the inquest.

“We didn’t find that improvements to fire safety response would have saved these lives or would save similarly situated lives in the future,” Giordano said in his submissions.

At the time the East Gwillimbury fire service was volunteer-run between 6 p.m. to 6 a.m. prompting questions following the fire about why it was that Central York Fire Services which had a full-time staff was not contacted and whether a partially volunteer-run fire service was enough for the growing area.

The inquest heard that 12 minutes is actually faster than the average for a volunteer firefighter response.

(Since 2014 there has been a fulltime fire service 24-7 in East Gwillimbury, supplemented by volunteer firefighters who are paged from their homes, said Fire Chief Phil Dawson who attended every day of the inquest.)

A simulation of the fire found that the 911 call likely came in between five and 12 minutes after the fire started at the earliest. A smoke detector outside the laundry room would have gone off in under a minute, one by the stairs in three minutes. By five minutes — when the second floor smoke alarm would have been triggered — evacuating by the stairs would have still been possible.

By twelve minutes, the temperatures at the top of the stairs would have been impossible to endure, climbing above 70 degrees.

Police officers were the first to arrive at the scene, and were unable to get into the blazing house, the inquest heard. They shouted for the family to jump through the secondfloor windows but heard nothing. Some officers tried to find ladders from neighbours as they waited five or six minutes for the fire trucks to arrive.

There was another brief delay after the 911 call taker, Danielle Migueis, learned there was a fire. She dialed in fire services dispatcher in Richmond Hill.

“Fire. He’s at 72 Howard Ave,” she said.

The fire dispatcher wrongly assumed it was a medical emergency not a fire.

However, another 911 call from a neighbour came in at 5:31 a.m., prompting fire dispatchers to realize it was a fire, not a medical call.

“Bluntly at the end of the day it didn’t really make a difference,” said John Saunders, the lawyer for the municipality of East Gwillimbury. “The first station was already on their way, they just re-dispatched another station.”