It's a story heard far too often. Fire breaks out in home, family inside is unable to get out and is killed.
Fortunately this story had a much happier ending.
In the early morning hours of May 18, a fire broke out at the rear of a home on the 1200 block of Sixth Street.
By a stroke of good fortune, Estevan Police Service officers happened to be in the vicinity attending to a noise complaint and saw the smoke emanating from the blaze.
Cst. Steve Enns was the first to arrive on the scene and immediately took action. Enns began knocking on the back door of the home to get the attention of those inside and was just about to knock the door down when the female occupant of the house opened the door to see what the commotion was.
After being informed of the fire she told Enns there were three other people in the home - her boyfriend and their son as well as a roommate.
"I remember running into the house not thinking about anything else other than let's get these guys out of here. I remember seeing smoke and fire going up the back kitchen wall, kind of like what you see in movies except now this was for real," Enns said while recounting the story for The Mercury.
Although he had to battle the intense smoke, Enns located the stairs and went to the second level of the house where he found the owners' two-year-old son in his bedroom. With the child in his arms, Enns proceeded to alert the sleeping roommate and then made a dash for the exit.
"I remember looking down the stairs and (the room) was completely black with smoke. I needed a gasp of air so I went for one and I just remember my throat just instantly started to burn," he said. "But really, I just kind of held my breath and closed my eyes; I knew where the door kind of was, so I just ran straight for it."
Speaking a couple of days after the fire, Warren Sukich, who owns the home with his girlfriend, happily reported that everyone was safe and sound and that anything they lost in the fire was replaceable. He also had praise for Enns who he described as "a hell of a guy."
"He saved our lives," said Sukich. "You can't speculate (on what might have happened) but chances are five, six minutes later how much more smoke would have been in there, could have we been overcome by it, I don't know."
Adding to the gravity of the situation was the word from the Estevan Fire Rescue Service that because the blaze started on the exterior of the home, the fire alarms on the interior had not gone off and if Enns had not seen the smoke when he did, the situation could have had a much different ending.
Although he was touched by the attention he received in the days after the fire, Enns humbly said that he was just doing his job and that if any other officer was in the same situation they would have done the same.
Perhaps. But when faced with the situation it was Enns who rose to the occasion and four people are alive because he did. If a story like that doesn't deserve to be one of our top stories the year, nothing does.
