FEBRUARY 27, 2015
GRACEFIELD, QUEBEC
This small Outaouais town is morning this morning after a
devastating fire which destroyed a family home and killed two young children.
"They were great children, they were so polite ,"
said Manon Piche, a neighbour and family friend, as she surveyed the carnage on
Friday morning. "It's such a shame."
Police have yet to confirm the identity of the two bodies
pulled from the rubble late Thursday night, but no one here has any doubt. It
was Piche who found the children's father, Eric Courtney, slumped in the snow
last night, burned and distraught after trying to rescue daughter Melanie, 2,
and son Matthew, 4.
Quebec provincial police are awaiting post mortems before
confirming the identities of the victims.
Firefighters, most of them volunteers, spent the morning
sifting through the charred debris and what's left of the old farmhouse.
Alexis, Piche's son, set a teddy bear on the snowbank near
the home, along with another neighbour Valerie Dubois.
After she rushed to the fire scene last night, Dubois said
there was a large explosion. Then she heard a big crack, and that's when the
house essentially caved in.
Piche said the Courtney's were in the process of building a
new, two-storey home just down the road.
"We can put our hands together and finish that house
for them," she said.
Friends are also setting up a bank account for the family,
who according to another friend did not have insurance on the dwelling, at the
end of the remote Eloi-Lachapelle Street outside Gracefield. The village is
along Hwy. 105 about 100 km north of Ottawa.
The cause of the fire is still unknown.
Courtney's wife, Tina, escaped the blaze with
three-month-old baby William in her arms, screaming to Eric, who had been out
chopping wood in the brush that surrounds the home.
Piche had originally spotted the smoke billowing from the
home and dialed 911, then rushed to the scene to find Eric outside. The
intense heat had forced him to flee the flames through a window.
“They were such nice children, they’re so polite," said
Piche, who sometimes babysat the children. "All of the children are
wonderful, they all help each other out.”
Eric and Tina are the parents of 10 children, according to
Piche. The other children were in school in nearby Kazabazua when the fire
broke out.
Rescue crews arrived shortly after the emergency call was
placed at 3:30 p.m. Thursday, but intense flames were still visible more than
an hour later.
Piche said the family suspects the fire originated in a
stove.
Both parents were taken to hospital in Maniwaki suffering
from shock, with baby William treated for smoke inhalation, and Eric also
treated for burns.
This is the fourth fire in which children have been killed
in Canada in February.
Wednesday, four Manitoba brothers perished in flames in
their country house. Saturday, 12-year-old twins were unable to escape the
inferno of a Gatineau apartment and February 17, children 18 months and two
years were killed in a fire on Makwa Sahgaiehcan reserve in Saskatchewan.