VANCOUVER, BC, Canada (January 6, 2014)—Trevor Yellowbird moved out of a family shelter and into a Surrey basement suite with his young son Jacob mere weeks before Christmas.
He was poor, unemployed and had few possessions but was armed with hope that B.C. would offer him a new life.
But on Thursday, disaster called in the form of a devastating fire, and Yellowbird, a man who once before had faced the threat of fire, responded in the only way he knew. He broke down the internal door to his new landlady Gurbux Dhanjal’s home at 8860 146a St. and charged up the stairs toward the fire.
Almost immediately he encountered Dhanjal’s blinded and choking father in the stairwell, and dragged him out on to the front lawn. He then ran back inside, frantically looking for his landlady, spurred on by high-pitched screams coming from upstairs.
Yellowbird was surrounded by thick, cloying black smoke and the crackling sound of the fire somewhere on the main floor. Choking in the fire-tinged gloom, he tore out wooden spindles on the stair railings so he could get to Dhanjal. He grabbed her burning body and dragged her too out on to the lawn.
“I heard the screaming, and I didn’t want them to suffer. I did what I had to do,” Yellowbird recounted simply on Friday. “It was frigging thick black smoke and I could hear crackling and see a little bit of flames. But I couldn’t get up. My landlady was upstairs in the living room, she was on fire and burning. I broke down the railing on the stairs, pulled it down so I could get at her and I dragged her out.”
But as Yellowbird turned back to try to reach Dhanjal’s mother and daughter, the heat and smoke were just too great and he was driven back.
At the back of the house Dhanjal’s daughter stood screaming at a window. Yellowbird’s sister, Robin, and her adult son Kelly Yellowbird frantically dragged a box-spring mattress under the window to break the girl’s fall, and she leaped, breaking an ankle.
But Trevor Yellowbird couldn’t get to Dhanjal’s mother, even though he tried, going so far as to try to break a window where he thought she was.
“I tried, I tried to get to her, but I couldn’t,” he said. “I didn’t know the layout of the house upstairs and there was nothing I could use to break the window to get to her. The smoke was too damn thick.”
Firefighters later recovered the elderly woman’s body after putting the fire out. They found four smoke detectors, all either dead or disconnected.
In the confusion and screaming, Yellowbird doesn’t remember anybody else coming to help him drag people to safety. By the time neighbours gathered around to comfort the victims, emergency responders had arrived.
This is the second time in his life that Yellowbird, 38, has rescued people caught in a fire. Nearly 20 years ago he and a friend were walking by a house in Edmonton that had just caught fire. They raced in and grabbed a young mother and two young children. Yellowbird was 19 at the time and shrugged off his actions, saying he was more amused that newspapers the next day said the family had been rescued by “two unidentified native males.”
This time there is no escaping recognition.
On Friday, the Surrey Fire Department said were it not for Yellowbird, the death toll in the Dhanjal household would have been higher.
“He was quite instrumental in saving at least two lives,” said Deputy Fire Chief Dan Barnscher. “He made at least two attempts to pull people out, and may have helped a third person jump to safety. There is very little doubt to me that he is a hero.”
Barnscher said three members of the Dhanjal family are still in hospital; two in Vancouver General Hospital and one in Royal Columbian Hospital in New Westminster. The B.C. Coroners Service said it has not yet officially identified the deceased and likely won’t release her name until early next week.
Yellowbird, a carpenter and member of the Pigeon Lake Indian Band in Alberta, said he and two-year-old Jacob are back in a family shelter in New Westminster, having lost nearly everything in the fire. Barnscher said efforts are now being made to find him a new home through the provincial social services ministry.
Yellowbird said he and Jacob had moved out from Alberta in December to start a new life and to be close to Robin and her family, who had recently suffered another tragedy. Robin’s elder son Kyle, 21, was murdered in August in Surrey after he came to the aid of a friend who was being attacked by an angry driver armed with a knife. That case is still open and police have a suspect.
“It’s far from home, but a place to start again, a new world,” Trevor said. “Pigeon Lake will always be my home, but here was a chance for Jacob and me to start over. I spent a week in a shelter with my son when we first came out here and I don’t want to go back to one. Now I need to find a new place.”
Trevor said Dhanjal had known Kyle and had agreed to rent her basement suite to help the family get on their feet. Robin, Kelly and her daughter Christy were visiting Wednesday night and had decided to stay overnight. Trevor said everybody except his sister had gone to sleep. At about 3 a.m. Robin heard a commotion upstairs “like a fight” and then smelled smoke.
Robin shook her brother awake and he checked the oven, furnace and laundry.
“I am very proud of my sister. She was the only one awake and she woke us all. She saved us too,” Trevor said. “Robin looked out the window and could see smoke pouring out and said ‘the place is on fire!’”
“I passed her my son and they got out, but she said there were people still upstairs. I could hear the screaming. I didn’t even try the front door, I just broke the door that separates our place from theirs. The older man was staggering down the stairs, trying to get out. I pulled him out, and he was saying something I couldn’t understand, motioning back to the house.
“So I ran back in and up the stairs and dragged my landlady out. I didn’t even think about it. It was just the right thing to do.”
Attempts to contact relatives of the Dhanjals were unsuccessful.
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