A Kahnawake man rescued five people from an apartment fire in LaSalle on Tuesday evening, before the local fire department arrived on the scene.
The incident began when Tontie Stacey, 39, was driving along the Clément exit and noticed a plume of black smoke in the distance.
“When you see black smoke, you know something's definitely on fire,” Stacey said. “You can tell the difference between grey smoke and black smoke.”
Stacey, a former Peacekeeper, decided to make a detour to investigate further. About a block away, he discovered the lower half of a three-story apartment building and a nearby car completely engulfed in flames.
“It was very black from the car that was right underneath the balconies that were engulfed in flames,” Stacey said. “Everything was blowing up in front of the car with the batteries and stuff.”
Stacey began knocking on doors in the building, helping two young men in their early twenties and a father and his daughter evacuate.
“[The young men] were just still in their boxers and socks,” Stacey said. “[The father] was trying to get some items, and the daughter was trying to get the dog.”
Amid the chaos, Stacey spotted an elderly woman standing on the second-story balcony of the apartment building.
“She was standing there in the smoke, trying to hold onto the railing,” Stacey said. “She had black smutt on her face and didn’t know what was going on.”
Stacey rushed upstairs through the thick smoke and lifted the woman into his arms.
“I took a deep breath ... and carried her down the flight of stairs [to] the sidewalk,” Stacey explained.
According to Stacey's best recollection, the entire rescue took about ten minutes. Firefighters arrived about five minutes after he finished evacuating the residents. Stacey left the scene shortly afterward, returning to Kahnawake to seek medical treatment for smoke inhalation at the Kahnawake Fire Brigade.
“I have asthma,” Stacey said on Wednesday. “My lungs are still a little raspy today.”
He was released from the Fire Hall 30 minutes later and went home to recover from the experience.
A video of the incident shows the fire started at approximately 4:57 p.m. on Tuesday.
Details are still emerging at this time. The conditions and identities of the people Stacey rescued remain unknown.
“I’d like to see how the elderly woman is doing,” Stacey said. “She was so frantic and didn't know what was going on, and she was trying to hold on to my arm to walk down the stairs.”