The home of well-known Kivalliq husband-and-wife artists and owners of the Matchbox Gallery, Jim and Sue Shirley, was destroyed by fire on 25th Street in Rankin Inlet on Wednesday, Jan. 8.
Rankin Fire Chief Mark Wyatt said the call came in at about 9:43 p.m.
He said the caller reported that there was smoke in the home and the individual saw some flames.
“George (Aksadjuak) was the duty officer and he was at the scene in less than two minutes,” said Wyatt. “Jim and Sue were still inside the structure and Jim is moving pretty slowly these days. They hadn't gotten out of the house completely yet and were in the porch when George arrived.
“He helped them get out of the house and looked inside to find the entire house full of smoke. He got them to safety, put them in the duty truck, did a page-out and the first engine was on scene about, probably, five or six minutes later.
“We had an attack crew lined up and ready to go in within two or three more minutes.”
Wyatt said the crew opened the door and went in approximately 10 feet before being met with black smoke. The firefighters could see nothing at all inside the dwelling, he added.
“With something like that – because it hadn't been vented at all apart from them going in the doorway – it quickly flashed over, all the smoke lit up and they backed out right away.
“From that point on we were into, pretty much, a fully-involved house fire.”
Wyatt said the firefighters left the scene at about 1:30 a.m. the following morning and were at the fire station until about 3 a.m. cleaning up.
He said the volunteer brigade had no hope of saving the structure.
“It was an older home. I think they were built here in the late '70s. It was kind of like a modular trailer home from that era. The inside walls weren't drywall or anything. They were almost like a panelling, and that's extremely flammable.
“Everybody who answered the call were fine; just a little tired. We had a blizzard that day, as well, so the weather, although it had calmed down a bit that night, was still fairly windy and there was a lot of excessive snow.
“So, approaching the building in two-or-three feet of snow in some places made it much more difficult to fight the fire. A lot of the fires we face here in the wintertime can be pretty challenging.
“You're working with frozen hoses and frozen gear. When you're spraying water, the water sprays on your gear and it's freezing. So I had eight frozen firefighters within an hour or two.”
