Jamiee Ellis, Raileen Muise, Jesse Ellis and Nathalie Ellis barely escaped with their lives on Nov. 19 when their Richmond Road home became fully engulfed by fire in a matter of minutes.
Darrell Currie had left for work around 6:30 that morning. Shortly afterwards, his son Jesse’s girlfriend, Raileen Muise, woke up to the smell of smoke and saw it wafting across the bedroom floor.
Jesse quickly found the source – a built-in bathroom wall heater from which he could see a “coffee-cup-sized” flame.
He hauled a tote-box containing three kittens out of the bathroom and hollered for the other family members – his mother Nathalie and sister Jamiee - to get out of the house.
He ran to get a pot from the kitchen to extinguish the flame but by then the bathroom was fully engulfed.
Meanwhile Nathalie was stumbling about in the smoke and heat to make sure her daughter had escaped.
Jamiee had already run outside, pantless, with her mother’s Old English sheepdog, Ollie, by her side and her cat Max in her arms.
“When I was running out, all I saw was an orange wall of flame on one side,” she said.
Jesse, shirtless, came out after her.
“I shut my eyes and I ran,” he said. I didn’t know I was running through the flames.”
He’s now coping with second-degree burns over 60 per cent of his back.
Everyone had made it out of the house except Nathalie, who was still crawling about her bedroom, searching for Sasha, Jamiee’s three-year-old Bernese Mountain dog.
The smoke was thicker by this time, black and dense from burning tires stored in the porch.
“The smell was horrific,” said Nathalie.
She could feel what she thought was Sasha’s tail and pulled, but the dog didn’t respond.
She stumbled out to the living room window and tried to smash the thermopane with her hand. Returning to her bedroom, she saw her little brown shih tzu/lhasa apso dog on her bed. She picked him up and threw him out the window. The little fellow lost three teeth in the incident but half an hour later he was chasing his tail with happiness on the lawn.
The others were frantic outside.
“We saw flames coming through the roof and she was still in there,” said Jesse.
Nathalie remembers hearing her son calling her: “Mom, mom, you’ve got to come!”
By this time she had an overwhelming feeling that she would not escape alive.
Jesse ripped the side of the bedroom window off and told his mother to crawl through.
“I went sideways into the window. It was like a squirrel going through a knothole,” she said,
She broke her nose in the process but is still amazed that her son was able to catch her and set her down as “light as a feather.”
Jamiee was distraught. She imagined the popping and snapping sounds of the burning wood was Sasha crashing about the house trying to find a way out.
Her brother tried smashing through the kitchen window to check and cut his hand. Later, all of them would discover the fire had singed their hair.
A riding ring was a few feet from the house and Nathalie saw one of their four horses, a 10-year-old Arabian gelding, Luke, pacing with fear. Sparks were floating on the wind and she was concerned the barn would catch fire. Barefoot and in her nightdress, she ran through thick muck to lead him to a lower pasture.
Three dogs and one cat perished in the fire. Another cat, Calypso, is still missing - a white fluffy female with a calico tail, one green eye and one blue eye.
The kittens had blistered paws and melted plastic in their fur but survived. Jamiee took over their care after their visit to the veterinarian and mother cat’s rejection of them.
The home was not insured and the family is temporarily living in Nathalie’s mother’s two-bedroom home.
They are overwhelmed with the kindness and support received since the fire. Jesse, who is studying auto mechanics at NSCC Burridge, is also employed by Canadian Tire. The store owner quickly designated the business as a drop-off point for donations of furniture, appliances and clothing.
“I always felt that we were invisible people,” said Nathalie, who works as executive director for Parents’ Place. “There are people I went to school with and haven’t seen in 30 years and they come and give me a hug. It’s unbelievable.”
Many people and businesses in the region have been collecting donations and holding fundraisers. People have lent them their cars with full tanks of gas, and phones, as keys to the family vehicles were in the house and have to be replaced.
A family friend in Alberta is buying winter jackets for all of them. A woman from the Cayman Islands donated $1,000.
Jamiee says the best donation she’s received is the promise of a Bernese Mountain puppy from a breeder in the valley.
It’s been hard, because I haven’t had her (Sasha) here with me to go through this,” she said, her voice choking.
“All my cat does is bite me.”
Nathalie says her children have never had the name brand clothes that they have now.
“The donations, I find, have helped the kids – they get the bags and it helps to occupy their minds while they go through them,” she said.
A GoFundMe campaign raised $4,950 as of Wednesday for the family.
Each day is a gift for them all.
“Yesterday I woke up and thought, people could be attending four funerals today,” said Nathalie.
