Stuck together Youth group plans second effort at street-hockey record. PAGE 15 On the fringe Eight shows featured during second annual theatre festival. PAGE B1 Hot start V.I. Raiders take season-opening win 44-14 over rival Rebels. PAGE 3
Strait to charity PAGE 4
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THURSDAY, AUG. 9, 2012
VOL. 24, NO. 44
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Neighbours pull three teens from burning house BY CHRIS BUSH THE NEWS BULLETIN
Three teens have their neighbours to thank for getting them out of a fire that erupted at a home south of Nanaimo on the weekend. Residents in Cedar were startled into action at about 9:30 a.m. Sunday when they heard the loud rush of an overheated barbecue propane tank venting – the first sign something had gone seriously wrong – at a home at 1497 Emma Way. Wendy Kennedy and her husband Eric were just getting their morning coffee when they heard the commotion. “We had just sat down with our coffee when all of a sudden we heard this loud noise,” Wendy said. “We just looked at each other and didn’t know what the heck it was. To describe it, it sounded just like a huge jet engine right in our front yard. It was so loud. I don’t know how those three people in the house didn’t wake up.” Eric, a former firefighter with the North Cedar Volunteer Fire Department, rushed to the house two doors down while Wendy called 911. Eric searched through the house and hollered until two teen girls – completely unaware of the fire – answered and he got them out of the house. Wendy sat with the girls, whom she said appeared to be groggy and in shock while Eric and another neighbour attempted to control the fire with garden hoses. A third neighbour, Paul Amann, arrived on scene about the time the girls remembered there was a teenage boy still sleeping in the basement. “Paul ran in,” Wendy said. “They told him what room he was in. Fortunately it was in the basement because the roof was already in flames.” ◆ See ‘FIRE’ /6
CHRIS BUSH/THE NEWS BULLETIN
Nanaimo Fire Rescue crews hose down wood chip piles and a conveyor system after a fire broke out at the Western Forest Products mill at Duke Point Tuesday.
Mill fire blackens city skies BY CHRIS BUSH THE NEWS BULLETIN
A fire in a conveyor belt Tuesday sent a massive column of black smoke over Nanaimo harbour and set piles of wood chips ablaze at the Western Forest Products mill at Duke Point. The fire started shortly after 5 p.m. and required several Nanaimo Fire Rescue trucks to bring under control. “It looks like they had some kind of
mechanical malfunction, or something happened, that caught the chips on the conveyor belt on fire. Before anybody caught it, it spread up the conveyor belt and into the hopper and onto the chip pile,” said Wade Smith, assistant fire chief. Firefighters had difficulty tackling the blaze because of its distance from water hydrants. Smith said crews had to lay down about 150 metres of hose, relayed through at least two pumper trucks to generate enough
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water pressure to fight the fire. A front-end loader was also used to spread the wood chips to break up the fire in the large wood chip piles. “They had two monitors going,” Wade said. “They were shooting over 1,000 gallons a minute. They needed to juice it up.” Smith said the exact cause of the fire is being investigated, but there appears to be nothing suspicious about it. photos@nanaimobulletin.com
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