Vivian Haris-Ganis started 2015 in intensive care at B.C. Children's Hospital, with no home to return to. Still, on New Year's Day, she said she feels "lucky."
"This is something like a blessing or something from God. We were blessed" Haris-Ganis said Thursday from the hospital, where her 11-year-old son, Dimitri, was recovering from injuries sustained in a devastating fire Monday night in Burnaby.
The "blessing" she talks about is the daring rescue by two neighbours during the second-alarm fire before firefighters arrived, when Dimitri was trapped in his second-storey bedroom.
The Ganis condo was devastated by the blaze, described by Burnaby's chief fire prevention officer as "totally gutted. It's a writeoff."
George Ganis, Vivian's husband and Dimitri's dad, said: "We end up with nothing, and nowhere to go. But Dimitri is going to be OK ... Nothing else matters."
The blaze broke out at around 8:30 p.m. on Monday, Ganis said, while he was in the office and his wife in the living room. Dimitri, meanwhile, was playing on his iPad in his bedroom, down the hall of their second-storey condo on Horne Street.
The flames, which appeared to originate from the hallway closet, grew so rapidly that they blocked George's way as he tried to get to his son's room. George was treated in hospital that night for burns he suffered as he tried to reach his son. Neighbours arrived with fire extinguishers, and others tried to get to the boy's room, but the flames in the hallway were too intense.
"It was just horrible. I thought he was going to burn," said George. "I thought we were going to lose Dimitri right then."
As a crowd of around 30 people gathered out front of the burning home, two neighbours quickly formed a plan.
The housing complex's caretaker, Michael Von Hatten, and another neighbour grabbed a ladder, rushed to the side of the home and leaned it against Dimitri's bedroom window. As Von Hatten held the ladder, the other neighbour climbed up, retrieved the boy from the window and carried him down to the ground.
Vivian was "frantic" she said, as she stood in her nightgown beneath the ladder looking up to her son's room.
"My instinct told me he has to get out right away or it's too late. So those two men — those two men, I owe my life to them," she said. "Without them, I don't know if my son would be alive."
The other man involved in the rescue declined to comment. Von Hatten said the man who climbed the ladder, a neighbour, Fred, didn't want the attention.
Thursday, Dimitri was at Children's — "the best hospital on the planet," according to his father — recovering from smoke inhalation and first- and second-degree burns. The boy was sedated and hadn't spoken since the fire, his dad said, but his condition was stable.
The Burnaby Fire Department received the call shortly before 9 p.m. and "when the crews arrived there was nobody in the home, they were met outside with the son who was then given over to the BIAS (B.C. Ambulance Service) to transport to hospital," said Greg Mervin, Burnaby's chief fire prevention officer.
The cause of the blaze wasn't known and fire investigators expected to return to the scene Friday, Mervin said.
George praised the bravery of Von Hatten and Fred, as well as the others who tried to help, calling them "heroes."
"They did an amazing thing. They saved his life," he said.
Von Hatten, who declined to be photographed, didn't quite agree.
"I don't consider myself a hero," said Von Hatten, though when pressed he admitted he was, at least, a decent neighbour. "It's just what you're supposed to do as a human being."
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