One shot dead, 3 killed in fire

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This article was published 16/03/2011 (5299 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

GODS LAKE NARROWS — Two tragedies and four deaths, separated only by 14 hours and 20 metres.

People in this northern community were grieving and angry after a house fire killed a respected elder and his two young great-grandchildren on Monday at about 11 a.m.

Hours later, in front of the gutted house, the community received another jolt when a grandfather was gunned down by an RCMP officer.

Demus James, who was in his 60s or 70s, died in his house along with his great-grandchildren Kaylene Okemow, 3, and Tron Kirkness, 1.

That was before Paul Duck, who lived near the fire scene, was shot by police. The shooting was apparently not directly related to the fire.

Chief Peter Watt said James was “a respected elder in the community.”

“He was on the board of health. He was crippled but he still managed to do a lot.

“A lot of people are going to miss him.”

Band Coun. Henry Nazzie said Kaylene, whose biological parents live in the community, was custom-adopted by James’ daughter.

Nazzie said Tron was from the nearby community of God’s River.

“He was only here to visit his great-grandparents — it’s just too bad.”

On Tuesday, yellow police tape surrounded what used to be a faded yellow-sided bungalow. Pieces of furniture were strewn outside the destroyed home. What was left of the blackened walls stood in sharp contrast to freshly falling white snow.

By the road in front of the gutted house, a large tarp with green camouflage covered the site where the victim of the shooting died.

Watt said the band’s firefighters and community members tried to battle the blaze, but they did it without something most fire departments have: a fire truck.

Watt said the community has asked Indian and Northern Affairs Canada for a fire truck in the community for years, to no avail. He said community members were left to rely on their two water trucks and a nearby fire hydrant.

“Of course, a fire truck would have made a difference,” the chief said.

“We had to find hoses and everything else. We had to find a monkey wrench to open the hydrant. It took awhile to find.”

Watt said at one time, the community had a fire truck, but wasn’t given funding to build a fire hall to put it in. Then, when money for the fire hall was coming, the fire truck no longer worked.

Noting Canada’s and the world’s response to disasters in Japan, Haiti and other places, Watt wondered why his northern reserve and numerous others don’t get the same attention.

“I wonder why we live in a Third World… it’s a never-ending story. That’s why I call it a broken record.”

A spokesman for Indian and Northern Affairs Canada’s Manitoba office said INAC funds firefighting operations on reserves annually.

But the spokesman said funding to Gods Lake Narrows plunged more than 43 per cent in the current fiscal year because INAC stopped funding a fire hall and fire truck.

“The First Nation currently uses its water truck for fire protection,” he said.

Gods Lake Narrows received $22,360 in the current fiscal year and between $45,610 and $39,720 in each of the last four years.

INAC and the Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs undertook a joint review of fire services on reserves in Manitoba but the results are still being finalized, said the spokesman. The review was triggered in May 2010 after a two-year-old died in a fire on Long Plain First Nation, west of Portage la Prairie.

The three deaths in Gods Lake Narrows brings the number of people killed in fires on reserves in Manitoba to at least 32 since 2005. That includes 13 children and 19 adults.

Grand Chief David Harper, of Manitoba Keewatinowi Okimakanak, an organization representing most First Nations communities in northern Manitoba, noted the lack of firefighting equipment, adequate housing and issues of safe water at northern reserves.

“This is another disaster and is the world jumping in? No.”

Watt showed reporters another house that caught fire on Saturday — two days before the fatal fire — and only two doors away.

All that was left of the house was the earthen basement into which the upper exterior walls and all contents fell.

“Thankfully, no one was home.”

 

— with files from Mia Rabson

kevin.rollason@freepress.mb.ca