Thompson Fire & Emergency Services responded to a fire at the Grey Wolf Bay townhouses around 1 a.m. Sept. 16, limiting damage to the townhouse where the fire started and an adjacent unit.
Thompson Professional Firefighters Association said on their Facebook page that every piece of the TFES’s firefighting equipment was used to battle the blaze and prevent a serious incident from becoming a catastrophe. Vale Manitoba Operations also contributed to the effort by brining their fire truck into the city as backup in case another fire broke out while TFES personnel were occupied.
Thompson RCMP said three people were taken to Thompson General Hospital with injuries including smoke inhalation and burns.
Jennifer Bottema, who lives nearby and captured photos and videos of the firefighters in action, said her husband helped a resident stuck on the second floor of one of the burning townhouses escape through a window by standing on a bench so she could crawl onto the screen door and then onto his shoulders and slide down to safety.
“She was yelling ‘fire’ and ‘help’ and that’s when we jumped out of bed and ran outside,” Bottema told the Thompson Citizen. “We were running around trying to find something she could jump down on or climb on. We didn’t really know what to do in that moment of stress. You just do what you have to do.”
Police, the TFES and the Office of the Fire Commissioner are investigating the fire, but RCMP say that, at this time, it is not considered suspicious.
