When the city shook as a downtown building exploded in flames, James Munro was not far away.
He was one of the first on the scene at about 7 a.m. on Aug. 22, when thieves attempting to steal copper pipe punctured a natural gas line at the former Achillion Greek Cuisine restaurant.
“There were a bunch of bystanders around the building and I heard people screaming for help and I just went in,” said Munro. “I wasn’t thinking of whether I was going to die, I was just thinking of saving these people.”
Munro, a resident of the homeless encampment at Millennium Park, knew one of the two people inside, a woman named Crystal, who was trapped under the flaming wreckage.
“I went in to grab her and her foot was stuck and I helped her out,” he said. “Her eardrum was perforated and there was blood coming out of her and concrete stuck to her face and I saved her and I grabbed a gentleman and helped him to the sidewalk.
“I had blood on me and people were asking me if I needed help and I just said no, that was from helping other people. The second time in, I saw the room was being held up by what looked like four little matchsticks and I just thought, oh God, don’t let it fall on me.”
A city gardener, Victoria Mcgivern, had been working on the grounds of an adjacent building when she apparently smelled the leaking gas and walked up to the door of the building and turned away. She was only a few metres away when the gas ignited in a powerful explosion.
“She was one of the townspeople and was watering plants and she was buried under the rubble and I had to move a bunch of concrete blocks off of her and I moved her to the safety of the sidewalk,” said Munro.
Mcgivern, a mother of three young children, told Munro to tell her kids that she loved them but he reassured her that she was going to survive.
“She was screaming because her arm was all messed up and I just said, ‘I’m going to get you out of here and you can tell them yourself,’” said Munro.