Meet the Last Man Out of the Building During the July 22 Fire at the YMCA Men’s Residence
06-08-2024
It was just before 12:30 in the afternoon on Monday, July 22. Jason was relaxing in his room with his headphones on listening to music.
As the fire alarm began to ring, he did nothing.
Jason lives on the third floor of the YMCA Men’s Residence in Downtown Hamilton. He was the last person out of the building when a fire broke out that sunny afternoon.
“I just happened to look over at my door and saw a puff of smoke coming through the crack...it was black, like a shadow almost. I took my headphones off, and I heard the alarm, and I knew something was off.”
Jason instinctively remembered what he’d been told by firefighters all his life and touched the door to see if it was hot.
“It was so hot, it was like an instant reaction, my hand bounced right off, and I knew I couldn’t open the door.”
He says the heat coming from the door was so intense that it singed his face.
“The room was filling up with black smoke, to the point where it was taking out the lights, it started to get dark.”
That’s when Jason heard the firefighters. He says they were yelling at each other to communicate through the smokey darkness.
“It was chaos,” says Jason. “I’ve never heard anything like that in my life – it was like a movie, unbelievable.”
Stuck in his room with smoke billowing in, Jason had to think quickly. He took one of his two fans and positioned it to blow the smoke back, then he took his second fan and positioned it facing away from the window to try and bring fresh air to him.
“Every once in a while, I’d turn around to gage the room and I’d walk over to the door and touch it to see how hot it was getting – I was touching the floor too because I didn’t know if [the fire] was underneath me.”
After nearly 30 minutes smoke was still pouring into the room but to Jason's touch the door had now cooled down.
It was time to make his move.
He opened the door, using his closet door as a shield, protecting himself from a potential blast of heat.
“I peeked around the corner and couldn’t see anybody; it was silent and there were hoses everywhere. The halls were filled with black smoke, the walls were dripping black,” he said.
Jason made his way to the staircase and grabbed hold of a railing.
“I tried to look at my feet, but I couldn’t see anything—it was just black. I had to inch my way down because I didn’t want to fall.”
Jason carefully made his way down the staircase, clambering over large hoses while the darkness throbbed around him. Black, powdery soot covered his body from head to toe.
“I walked out. A firefighter saw me and came running towards me and put me in an ambulance.”
Jason was taken to Jurivinski Hospital but was quickly transferred to Hamilton General Hospital for Hyperbaric oxygen therapy due to the amount of carbon monoxide in his system. Hyperbaric oxygen therapy is a painless treatment that increases the amount of oxygen in your body.
“I took a lot of smoke damage. They told me I was the worst for carbon monoxide poisoning.”
Jason has been diagnosed with COPD (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease), but he says he feels grateful nothing worse happened.
“I was blessed. I was thankful that I got out, I really was. I’ve never been through anything like that before and I never want to go through anything like that again.”
Now, back at the Y, just three floors below where it all happened, Jason’s been getting support and is doing well, although he says he’s feeling a bit anxious about going back to his room.
“I just couldn’t do it. I was kind of panicking. Going back into the smoke and the room. It’s been playing back in my head, every day.”
But he says the volunteers and staff at the Y have made a bad experience just a little bit easier.
“The staff are angels here. All the people here, everything they’re doing—they’re like Supermen and Wonderwomen. They’re going above and beyond duty for everybody here.”
And while getting through this experience won’t be simple, Jason is looking at the light.
“I've found that it’s brought a lot of us tighter together.”
“It's going to change my life. Something like this, it wakes you up, it wakes your spirit up. It’s kind of like a blessing in a way, because it shows you the value of your life...”
“...it could be gone in a second.”
#ShineOn
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