Officers lauded for rescue of residents trapped in burning house

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This article was published 01/03/2017 (3165 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Winnipeg police officers had already rescued people from a burning house on Spence Street early Saturday when they found out more were trapped on the third floor.

In the next few minutes, one of the officers would end up rescuing the other from being overcome by heavy smoke just before firefighters arrived to rescue the final victim.

It was four minutes of harrowing drama on the 500 block of Spence about 2:30 a.m. Saturday. Officers rescued as many as seven people from the flames. At least two or three others, including a child carried out in a blanket, escaped the house before the officers arrived. Aside from minor smoke inhalation, nobody including the two police officers, was reported hurt in the fire.

Winnipeg police Chief Danny Smyth had high praise on Wednesday for the two officers, Const. Ashley Thompson, a five-year veteran, and his partner, Trevor Bragnalo, a former RCMP officer who joined the Winnipeg police two years go.

“We had two officers who happened to be in the right place at the right time,” Smyth said.

“They came to the aid of people even before it was phoned into the fire department. They didn’t wait… I have no doubt their actions prevented something tragic from happening.”

The two officers said they spotted the fire on their way to another call.

The most dramatic part of the rescue was on the third floor where three men were trapped, and where one officer used his boots to kick off a window security screen that was the only way out of the flames.

“You could see clear panic on his face. You could see it. He couldn’t get out. They were trapped,” Bragnalo recalled Wednesday, recounting the face that stared out from behind the barred window before he put his boots to it.

“I just took a step back and I kept kicking the screen as hard as I could until I smashed the window and the screen flew off.

“There was a lot of glass.

“I had the gentleman take his blanket off his bed and put it around the window and then he crawled out the window, him and the other gentleman.

“At that point he told me there was a gentleman trapped across the hall, unable to get out.”

Bragnalo called out to his partner that he was going in. Thompson, meanwhile, was on the other side of the house pulling another man out a window on the same floor.

“I knew Trevor had gone in so I had to go over,” Thompson said, explaining that a landing extended from the fire escape around the floor on the exterior of the house.

Bragnalo was already inside, through the bedroom and on the landing and blinded by smoke when Thompson reached the window.

“At that point the smoke was so thick I couldn’t see my hand in front of my face,” Bragnalo said.

“As I turned around… my partner crawled in behind me. He grabbed my belt and pulled me back through the door,” Bragnalo said, recounting how his partner rescued him.

As the pair crawled back out the window to safety, firefighters met them on the fire escape landing. The crew got the final man out of the house.

Smyth said it’s rare he pulls officers from the ranks to face cameras but the rescue was extraordinary.

“I’ve probably put them more on the spot than they intended. We do this job to help people and you don’t do it for recognition but every now and again it’s nice to put a face in the community for the good work we do out there, the police chief said.

“I have no doubt their actions were instrumental in preventing a real tragedy.”

alexandra.paul@freepress.mb.ca