PAISLEY, ONT. -- Andrew Yule and Jeremy Gowan are being hailed as heroes Friday, a day after saving a Paisley couple from their burning home.
Yule noticed a glow coming from an Albert Street home as he was driving his snow plow through Paisley around 4 a.m. Thursday.
He pulled over, called 911, and rushed over himself to find a home ablaze, and flames spreading to a nearby home.
Once he realized no one was in the first house, he and fellow Bruce County snow plow operator Andrew Gowan started knocking on Dale and Cheryl Steinhoff’s door.
“They weren’t knocking on the door, they were pounding on our door. Blaring their horns to wake us up,” Dale Steinhoff says.
The Steinhoffs eventually came to the door, to see their home was on fire. Gowan and Yule quickly ushered the couple to the safety of their snow plows, and started alerting more neighbours on the quiet street.
Fire crews arrived shortly thereafter, and put out the blaze.
In the end, both the Steinhoff home, and the uninhabited neighbour's home where the fire began, were destroyed.
But if not for the actions of two snow plow drivers, the Steinhoffs may not have made it out of their burning home alive.
“I’m not sure we would have got out without them. They’re our heroes,” Steinhoff says.
Yule and Gowan don’t consider themselves heroes. They say they were just happy to help.
“It was bad. Another five minutes might have been too late. I guess we were just in the right place at the right time,” says Yule.
Fire officials believe the fire started in the attic of the uninhabited home. The cause has not yet been determined.
