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Sudbury family recovering from traumatic weekend fire

Daughter recalls how her mother shielded her and her son from the flames, sacrificing her body to keep them safe; a GoFundMe campaign is running to help fire victims with recovery

A Sudbury mother credits her mother for sacrificing her own body to protect her daughter and grandson from the flames, and the quick actions of city firefighters and paramedics, for helping them survive a traumatic weekend fire.

The fire occurred in a two-storey apartment building on St. Joseph Street, off Mountain Street near the city’s downtown core. Firefighters received the call about the blaze at 4:30 a.m. on Aug. 30. The blaze destroyed most of the family’s belongings.

The fire was determined not to be suspicious in nature, but the exact cause remains under investigation.

That single mother, Shaylee Savoie, her toddler and her mother all became trapped by the fire in the second-storey apartment and had to be rescued from the window using a ladder truck. The toddler, however, had to be dropped from the window into the arms of a downstairs neighbour before firefighters arrived.

Savoie said she and her family are recovering from the harrowing experience. Her mother, Carol Peddie, remains in a Toronto hospital with second- and third-degree burns over 13 per cent of her body. 

A GoFundMe campaign set up by Peddie’s cousin includes an update on Peddie’s condition. Dated Sept. 1, the update states Peddie remains sedated and still requires a breathing tube.

Savoie said she remains traumatized by the experience, but is grateful to the neighbour who helped get her son to safety, and to the fast-acting firefighters and paramedics who came to their aid.

“I just want to tell them how thankful I am and how we couldn’t be more grateful to them,” Savoie said.

She said everything was normal when she went to bed on Saturday night, but sometime in the early morning hours her mother woke her up.

“I just remember her saying, ‘Shaylee, there’s a fire and we can’t get out’,” Savoie said.

She recalls the fire being in the porchway of the apartment when she got out of bed. The first thing she did was rush into her son’s room to scoop him out of bed. 

They then ran to the living room, opened a window, ripped off the screen and began screaming “for our lives,” Savoie said.

It was in the very early morning hours of Sunday and no one heard them at first. Savoie became desperate to save her son.

“I told my mom that we needed to drop my son out of the window” as they had no other way of getting out of the apartment.

The heat was unbearable and the smoke was becoming thicker with each passing moment, making it harder and harder to breathe the longer they were in the apartment.

Believing her only option was to drop the toddler from the second-storey window, Savoie turned back into the room to grab a blanket to wrap him in, figuring it would at least give him some protection from the fall.

As her mother held her, Savoie leaned as far as she could out of the window, dangling her son toward the ground. She hung down by the waist as far as she could to cut the distance to the ground.

Then, just as she was about to let go, her downstairs neighbour —  alerted by the screams, the smoke or the heat — came out of the front door of the building. Unable to wait any longer, she dropped the young boy into the neighbour’s arms, who then ran across the street away from the fire.

It was at that moment, Savoie said, the porch door “blew in and smoke poured in.”

All this time, Savoie said, her mother placed her own body between her daughter’s body and the fire, shielding the single mother and her toddler from the worst of the heat.

With each passing second, the fire intensified consuming what little oxygen remained in the room that hadn’t been pushed out by the billows of thick, dark smoke.

Savoie crawled out the window, holding onto the sill with one hand and her mother with the other. Peddie, her mother, leaned as far as she could out of the window. Savoie tried to pull her mother of the window with her, but because she was dangling nearly two storeys above the ground, she didn’t have enough leverage.

“My mom started screaming, ‘My legs are burning! My legs are burning!” Words Savoie will never forget.

“My mom saved us. She took all those burns to protect us,” she said.

Just then, Savoie said she could hear the sirens of the approaching fire trucks. Greater Sudbury Fire Services arrived to find the two women dangling out of the window and the upper storey of the building engulfed in flames.

Firefighters put the ladder up and Savoie jumped onto it before it was fully deployed, sliding down until firefighters got her into their arms.

“I just yelled at them, ‘Save my mom!’, then I ran across the street to my son,” she said.

Savoie said she is still very traumatized from the experience, but grateful everyone survived.

Besides a few bruises, she said her son was OK. She suffered smoke inhalation and extensive bruising from the experience at the window. Her mother, as stated earlier, remains sedated in hospital and on a breathing tube.

Brad Farr, a cousin to Peddie and Savoie, set up a GoFundMe campaign to help the family with recovering, which is nearly halfway to its $10,000 goal. 

“They were lucky enough to get out, but are still in the hospital recovering. Carol, who was also trapped in the fire, has been airlifted to Toronto due to the severity of her burns,” the description on the campaign reads. “They have lost everything that they own in the fire. They will not be able to recover from their losses alone. If you are able to help in any kind of way, I know it will be greatly appreciated.”

If you would like to contribute, click here to be taken to the campaign page.

Savoie said a crowdfunding campaign has also been set up for her downstairs neighbour, who also lost possessions in the fire. Sudbury.com will share details on that campaign when they are available.


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Mark Gentili

About the Author: Mark Gentili

Mark Gentili is the editor of Sudbury.com
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