Man dies of injuries after Kings County duplex fire

An 83-year-old man who was rushed to hospital in critical condition after a house fire in Aylesford early Tuesday morning has died.

Aylesford fire chief Shawn Carey said a neighbour across the street saw smoke and flames coming from around an air conditioner in a window on one half of a single-storey duplex on Sandy Court shortly before 7 a.m. The occupant was still inside.

The neighbour ran across the road and pried the air conditioner out of the window.

It was around that time that Carey was arriving in his personal vehicle.

“When I got here, there were flames coming out the window. The neighbour put a fire extinguisher on it, I put a fire extinguisher on it, then I went in to try to see if I could reach (the occupant). I got close, but not close enough.”

Without full protective gear, the smoke and heat forced Carey back out, at about the time the first truck from the department was arriving from the station, which is only half a kilometre away.

Carey and another firefighter headed back in wearing breathing apparatus and pulled the man out of the home. He was found in the bedroom, which is where the fire started.

The fire damage was contained to one room, Carey said.

Deputy chief Owen Collins was arriving as Carey came out the first time.

“He came out without the BA on, then another of the firefighters was there with a BA and they both suited up and went in,” Collins said. “It seemed like an hour, but it was probably two minutes, if that, before they found him and came out.”

Paramedics took the man to Valley Regional Hospital, where a LifeFlight helicopter was landing to transport him to Halifax.

Diane Corbin lives in the other half of the duplex and was in her bedroom, which backs on the victim’s room.

“I heard a bunch of noise. There was a really loud noise like a bang, and (I) yelled his name and asked him if he was all right.”

The walls in the duplex are thin, she said, and they could regularly hear each other through them.

There was no answer.

“I yelled ‘I’m coming over’ and came outside,” Corbin said.

When she came out the side door of her unit, she said, she could smell refrigerant from the air conditioner and smoke “was all over the place.”

Corbin came around the front of the building and saw the smoke and fire in the window.

The neighbour from across the street was banging on the side door of the burning duplex trying to get the occupant to answer before going to the window with the extinguisher.

Corbin said the incident shook her badly.

“I was shaking, I was crying,” she said. “I’m still in shock. It was scary.”

She was checked over by paramedics at the scene but didn’t need to go to hospital.

The blackened and dented air conditioner was in the driveway. The area around the window was burned and the soffit above was melted.

The fire marshal’s office was called to the scene to help investigate the cause along with RCMP. Police spokesman Cpl. Chris Marhsall said they are trying to determine whether the fire started in the air conditioner or spread to it from a fire that started in the room.