Four people — including two teens and a baby — are survivors of a fast-moving house fire thanks to an off-duty RCMP officer who rushed to their aid and helped a desperate man pull his family out of a basement window.
Const. Anton Lorde was on his way home late in the afternoon from his shift on July 18 when he spotted a plume of dark smoke billowing into the sky. It led him to Mount Pleasant Street in the Whitney Pier neighbourhood of Sydney, N.S.
Lorde arrived to find a house being ravaged by fire, with flames shooting out the front, sides and roof. He assumed no one was home because a number of people were milling about. So he immediately started clearing the narrow street for the arrival of fire trucks.
But when he stopped a neighbour to ask about the homeowner, he was told a lot of people lived there, including kids.
“I’ll never forget that — it almost seemed like everything froze,” the 10-year veteran of the RCMP said in a recent interview.
The neighbour pointed Lorde to a backyard where he hopped a fence and began banging on windows of the burning building, going from one to the next in case someone was inside.
Suddenly, hands parted the blinds, and the eyes of a shocked boy looked back at him.
“Probably frightened him with some of the things I was saying for him to get out. Then I lost sight of him because he closed the blinds,” Lorde said.
“At that point, my mind is going a mile a minute.”
He continued to pound on the window, yelling for them to get out and calling for someone to pass him something to smash the glass, when the father of the children appeared.
In an interview at his burned-out property, Peter Magliaro said he was nearly home when he got a call from his niece that his house was on fire.
As he ran between buildings in “unbearable heat,” flames burned his cheek, he said.
“You’re not thinking, all that was on my mind was the kids.”
He started “hollering” to them, knowing they were at home and that his 13-year-old son was likely sleeping because he plays video games at night.
Then Magliaro started kicking in a basement bedroom window before Lorde ripped away the thick blinds to bust out the glass shards.
Magliaro grabbed the four-month-old baby girl from her mother, who is Magliaro’s stepdaughter, and passed her to Lorde. He had no idea Lorde — who wasn’t in uniform — was a police officer.
Magliaro’s brother-in-law, who lives on the same street, helped him haul the rest of the children out the window: his teenaged son, and his stepdaughters, who are 15 and 22.
Some details of the rescue are a blur to Lorde, who hails from Uniacke Square in Halifax. But it was not a solo effort.
“There were a number of us that saved lives. I think the older gentleman bringing it to my attention at the time, and then my natural instincts and training kicked in at that point, and then the father or stepfather coming to assist in a time of urgency,” said Lorde.
Magliaro agreed it was three men pulling together, and praised the Mountie.
“That’s big, not too many people would do that with the amount of people that were here that day,” said Magliaro. “I mean this guy’s right there on my back with me.”
Lorde said someone hugged him before he left the scene. Another person shook his hand and called him a hero, but he downplayed the suggestion.
“I was meant to be there,” he said.
The municipality said its fire crews were called at 5:30 p.m. and were on scene within six minutes. Fire crews were able to save the family’s cat and a rabbit, Magliaro said.
The fire marshal’s office declined to comment, citing an ongoing investigation, and noted Cape Breton Regional Police are also investigating.
In a Facebook post, Magliaro contends the fire was intentionally set and is offering a reward for information leading to the arrest of “the person or people responsible for setting my house on fire while my children were inside.”
Magliaro said his brother-in-law told him “they heard a bang and then the next thing you know the whole front of the house was engulfed in flames.”
With both doors to the home ablaze, “somebody had to have set the fire, and it wasn’t from the inside,” Magliaro said.
CBC News asked Cape Breton Regional Police about the allegations in Magliaro’s Facebook post.
“We cannot speculate on the cause and/or whether the fire was intentionally set; answering those questions is part of the investigation,” police spokesperson Desiree Magnus said in an emailed statement.
Magliaro said he’s been told it could take six to eight weeks to learn the results of the fire investigation.
Magliaro and his family are now living in a friend’s apartment. He said the house was uninsured but he intends to draw from savings to start rebuilding in the spot where he’s lived for 35 years.
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