‘I owe these guys my life’: Paramedics save man from New Brunswick house fire

A pair of New Brunswick first responders are being praised for saving a man from a burning building.

Steven Comeau doesn’t remember much about the morning of April 18.

“I do remember waking up to a fire,” Comeau says. “I got to the bottom of the stairs, and I looked up to the top, and all I could see was the flow of the fire.”

Knowing he couldn’t escape his New River Beach, N.B., home through the upstairs, he tried to get out through a small basement window.

The next thing he can recall is waking up in a Saint John Regional Hospital bed with burns and cuts across his body. He also suffered severe smoke inhalation.

Now out of hospital with crutches, Comeau has learned a pair of paramedics with Ambulance New Brunswick are the reason he made it out of his house alive.

“I can’t even express it in words,” Comeau says. “I can’t thank these guys enough.

“Everyone always speaks about heroes, and I’ve got two of them.”

Getting the call

It was sometime after 4 a.m. Paramedic George “Denny” Cogswell along with his partner for the night shift David Craft got the call about a structure fire in New River Beach.

The pair were the first to arrive on scene of the fully involved house fire.

“We showed up and we knew somebody was there just from the dispatch information,” says Cogswell, who is also the mayor for the Rural Community of Fundy Shores. “We got out and David went to one side of the house, I went to the other where I’d seen a truck. I thought, or the hope was that somebody got out.”

After searching through thick smoke and intense heat, the pair couldn’t find anyone. Just when they were about to head back to the truck and wait for firefighters to arrive, Craft heard someone calling for help and saw Comeau’s arms sticking out from the basement window.

“I don’t know if we are going to get him out,” Craft admits when asked what he was thinking at that moment.

But the two paramedics, who have nearly 50 years of combined experience in the field, knew they couldn’t wait for help and began doing what they could to get Comeau out from the basement.

“I went in first and tried to lift him out and couldn’t get him out, the kind of drove me back,” says Craft, who has some experience with house fires thanks to his service as a volunteer firefighter with the Musquash department.

“Me and Denny kind of went back and forth in a couple attempts, and the last one we had a blanket. I don’t know if Denny managed to get him up or he managed to get him up a little bit.”

“Kudos hugely to Dave,” Cogswell says. “I grabbed his arm, there was so much soot and debris and everything around and Dave really, you know, gave all that he could. We got him up enough that we could fully grab him to slide him out onto the lawn.”

All three were taken to hospital for smoke inhalation. Craft also suffered a burn, but a few days later was already back on the truck taking calls.

Both Cogswell and Craft say they did what any first responder would have done. They were each quick to praise the other for their heroics that morning.

“I’m super proud of Denny,” says Craft. “It wasn’t just me, it wasn’t just him, it was us trying to get him, trying to fight the heat and trying to get him out.”

“As a community leader, I would definitely recommend him for whatever I can recommend him for,” Cogswell says.

Peter Turnbull, Ambulance New Brunswick’s regional director for its southern operations, says the organization is incredibly proud of their frontline workers for saving someone’s life.

He calls it a true testament to the men and women who serve the province frontline health needs.

“We have amazing people every single day that are doing wonderful things,” Turnbull says. “These two particular gentlemen went well above and beyond our expectations, and it’s nice to see that there’s some recognition.”

Turnbull says the organization’s internal recognition program will highlight the efforts of Cogswell and Craft and they are looking at ways to celebrate them with the community.

“I’m proud of all paramedics,” says Cogswell. “They save lives every day, we just don’t hear about them every day. This just happened to be out of our wheelhouse and into a fire wheelhouse.”

‘I wasn’t sure if he was still with us’

Cogswell says the biggest takeaway from the entire situation is the fact someone has been given a second chance, and their family still gets to see them every day.

That’s how Comeau’s daughter Alexis Comeau feels.“I am so incredibly thankful,” she says standing beside her father. “For a moment, I wasn’t sure if he was still with us, so again no words, but I would like to send a special thanks to the two individuals for saving my dad’s life and putting theirs on the line.”

“I owe these guys my life,” Comeau says. “That’s not in their job description and the fact that they did that speaks, I don’t even know, there’s no words.”

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