Inquest told Manitoba reserve had no chance fighting house fire without truck

WINNIPEG — An RCMP officer who investigated a fatal house fire in a Manitoba aboriginal community says people trying to fight the flames didn’t have a chance without a fire truck.

Const. Mark Stienwandt with the Island Lake RCMP told an inquest into two fatal fires on northern reserves that the house in St. Theresa Point was engulfed by the time he got to it.

He says people were trying to put out the fire with buckets of water carried from community water trucks.

Stienwandt says he got upset watching their futile efforts.

The fire in St. Theresa Point in January 2011 killed two-month-old Errabella Harper.

A second fire about two months later in God’s Lake Narrows killed Demus James and his grandchildren two grandchildren.