Don’t call us heroes.
That’s the message from Steven Appleyard and Jared Rempel, residents of Surey’s West Cloverdale neighbourhood. The pair dragged a man from a burning house Jan. 9, but they say they were just doing what had to be done.
The two acted quickly and selflessly to save a young man in his 20s after they both heard an explosion in their neighborhood in the 16900 block of Jersey Drive—a few doors down from their own homes.
“I was pulling out of my driveway at the time and I heard a boom that shook the whole neighborhood,” recalled Appleyard. “I looked out to my left and I saw smoke. I was in my car at the time, so I drove down there, and there was blast (debris) everywhere.”
He said he saw Rempel sprinting from a nearby home. The windows were blown out and flames were licking the roof and the walls through the openings.
“We were yelling, ‘Is anyone in there? Is anyone in there?’ And we hear this young man screaming, just bloody murder,” Appleyard said.
He and Rempel approached the door. They couldn’t even get to the door itself because the soffit, gutters, and wall pieces had fallen and blocked the way. Inside they continued to hear the man screaming.
“We saw the guy pressed against the door,” Rempel said. “There was a bunch of debris in front of the door, so we ripped that all off.”
“Me and Jared just grabbed this whole giant piece. We dragged it out of the way,” Appleyard explained. “The young man in the house was at the door. But he couldn’t get it open. He was completely engulfed in flames.”
At that point, Appleyard and Rempel decided to smash in the door amidst the growing fire. The blaze had not spread to the upper part of the house yet and was still contained to the lower part.
“His hands were mangled, like he wasn’t really able to use them” Rempel noted. “So he wasn’t really able to unlock the door.”
“We kicked it open and got him out,” Appleyard added. “He was in rough shape. There was nothing left on his body.”
The pair got arms under both sides of the young man and pulled him out of the building and out to the sidewalk.
The 20-something man, according to emergency services, suffered third degree burns. His clothes were completely burnt off his body.
One thing that stuck out for Appleyard was that the young man was still wearing headphones.
“The plastic was completely melted. The only thing left was the metal,” Appleyard said. “It was pretty horrific.”
Appleyard and Rempel struggled to get the young man out to the road as he was collapsing along the way, unable to stand or walk on his own. Another resident came by with some blankets to cover the young man up.
“We got him as comfortable as we could until the paramedics arrived.”
Once on the sidewalk, the kid started repeating “my dad, my dad, my dad.” The pair then wondered if they had to run back into the burning house.
Rempel started yelling into the house from the doorway.
“Then he started saying, ‘no, no, no. Just me. No one else.’ So we took his word for it,” Appleyard added.
The pair then got a phone number from the kid and it was the kid’s dad. So they phoned his dad and let him know what had happened.
Rempel said it looked like the young man’s eardrum was ruptured and his hands were badly burned.
Appleyard said the whole experience was “pretty intense” and “horrific” and something he’ll never forget.
When the paramedics came they took the young man to Cloverdale Athletic Park where he was airlifted to VGH.
“I didn’t really think about what to do other than help,” Rempel said. “It’s not something rational. I just acted.”
He explained that there was another woman there, a nurse, but he doesn’t know her name. He said she was a great help too.
Rempel said he and Appleyard talked about the whole experience later.
“It was a lot,” he said. “You play it back in your mind and you think of all the little things you could do better or more efficiently, but realistically the guy’s out of the house and still alive.”
Rempel said he and Appleyard agreed they’d do the same thing again.
“We did what we would want other people to do for us,” Rempel added. “Nothing really mattered. It was just, ‘Get him out.’ You do what you need to do to help people who need help.”
Surrey Fire Services (SFS) confirmed they were called to the house in the 16900 block of Jersey Drive at about 4:40 p.m. after an explosion rocked the neighbourhood.
Jeff Klassen, SFS battalion chief, said a man in his 20s was airlifted out of Cloverdale Athletic Park with third-degree burns. In an upate Saturday, Surrey Police said the 22-year-old man suffered life-threatening injuries and is being treated in hospital but is expected to survive.
Crews put the fire out by the early evening.
SFS said it’s unclear what caused the explosion and that the fire is under investigation by the RCMP SPOSU General Investigation Unit (GIU).
Police ask anyone with information about this incident to contact SPS’s non-emergency line at 604-599-0502, or Crime Stoppers at 1-800-222-8477 or www.solvecrime.ca and quote file number 26-1201 (SU).