Winnipeg Free Press - ONLINE EDITION
Bicyclist alerts residents to house fire on William Avenue
WINNIPEG -- The upstairs resident of a central Winnipeg house that caught fire Friday afternoon praised a passerby who went out of his way to help after he spotted smoke.
Melvin Mokelkie was pedalling down the 800 block of William Avenue on his bicycle just before 3 p.m. when he noticed smoke filtering out of a house window.
"I started knocking on the bottom door, kicking it and yelling ‘Everybody out, everybody out,’" he said.
Mary Lamirande was talking on the phone when she heard a noise outside her window.
"I looked out and all I saw was smoke and flames and fire," she said.
At the same time she heard her brother shouting that there was a fire downstairs, and she needed to get out.
She grabbed her three-year-old toddler, Christopher, and ran down the stairs.
"I just want to thank him," she said of Mokelkie.
Lamirande added that she doesn’t know the downstairs residents, who were out of the house at the time, but said she believed a woman and her children lived there.
Chief Claude Scott of the Winnipeg Fire Department said Friday afternoon it was too early to speculate how the fire started, but said fire investigators were on scene.
The fire was contained to the back bedrooms on the main floor, he said, and was easy to put out once fire crews were able to enter.
No one was in the house at the time, Scott added. He estimated the fire caused about $25,000 worth of damage.
arielle.godbout@freepress.mb.ca
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