If not for a late night getting a five-month-old baby to sleep and a smoke before bed, members of a Waterhen Lake First Nation family fear they could have died in a fire that reduced their home to ashes.
“If I had fallen asleep that night, we probably would have burned in that house,” recalled Raven-Amber Lasas.
She had just laid down around 1:30 a.m. CST on May 21, when Lasas heard a loud bang outside the house, which is in the Meadow Lake, Sask., area. When she came up from the basement to check it out, all she saw through the front window were flames.
From there, chaos
Lasas’ grandfather Michael Ernest was out cold after a long day tree planting, and seven other family members were sound asleep in the house.
Everyone was jarred awake by Lasas’ shouts of “There’s a fire, you guys all have to get out right now!”
There was no time for shoes, no time to get dressed.
“We came out just like that, with nothing,” Lasas said.
“That’s how close we came to getting burned,” Ernest said.
In the panic, Ernest’s wife, who is weakened from kidney dialysis treatments, fell over and another family member had to rush back to help her up.
The only escape — the front porch — was where the flames were coming from.
Lasas went to grab the front doorknob and it was already hot. There was a narrow space to squeeze out the door, as the fire was on the other side of the porch and spreading.
“We had to go right by the flames…it was scary,” Ernest said.
Lasas stood there, holding her baby, taking a head count of everyone as they left, making sure no one was missed. When she was told her brother and sister-in-law were coming, Lasas ran to leave her baby with the neighbours.
The few items they could grab were signs of the rush: for Ernest, it was the truck keys, and for Lasas, it was her baby’s bottle and two diapers.
“We just all instantly had to save our lives. When you see flames that big, high, there’s nothing you can grab in that house. There’s no time for nothing,” Lasas said.
Survival instincts kick in
“I don’t know what the heck I was feeling in those moments because I was trying to save the house, and save our lives,” Ernest said.
“We came close to dying in that fire.”
Even though the house was on the lakefront, only a short distance from water, there was no time to get the fire out before it spread and consumed the home. Community members started helping out, and Lasas called 911 for help.
It was too late.
Ernest had built the house for him and his wife 26 years ago. The life they had built within its walls is now gone: a lifetime of photos of their children, grandchildren and belongings.
“We pretty well lost everything,” he said.
Adding fear to the family, is that both Ernest and Lasas smelled gasoline in the air as they were escaping. With how fast it spread, they and fellow community members are worried it was started intentionally.
Ernest said he can’t imagine what would motivate anybody to do this.
“I don’t have any feud with anybody. I run a sweat lodge, I’m an Elder and I haven’t had any words with anybody about anything,” he said.
CBC has reached out to the RCMP, but has not yet received a response.
Now the family has to rebuild their lives, with none of their belongings.
The First Nation is banding together and donating items to get them back on their feet, and they are bouncing around, staying with other family members.
It feels unstable, Lasas said, and beyond that, she’s struggling to feel safe again.
“It’s kind of hard for me to sleep now,” she said.
The other night when she was falling asleep she thought she heard flames and jumped up to see everything was fine.
“I’m pretty paranoid still.”
Waterhen Lake is about 400 km northwest of Saskatoon.