'Mystery man' alerts sleeping family to house fire danger

A woman whose Saskatoon neighbourhood was hit by a rash of suspicious fires on Friday says she wonders what would have happened if a worried stranger hadn't woken her by knocking frantically on her door.

In a span of two hours from 2-4 a.m. CST, there were five fires on Kolynchuk Bend, Kolynchuk Link and Kolynchuk Court in theStonebridge neighbourhood.

• 5 fires in 2 hours hit Saskatoon's Stonebridge neighbourhood

Suzanna D'Aprile was asleep when she heard someone knocking on the door and ringing the doorbell repeatedly at about 3:30 a.m.

Hesitant to open the door to a stranger, she called her parents-in-law in the suite at the back of her home to ask them to unlock their door and let her in.

"As soon as I went through the back door I saw flames and smoke and realized there was a fire, but I didn't know if it was our house or next door, so I yelled to my in-laws, 'Fire!'" she said.

Stranger goes 'above and beyond'

D'Aprile snatched up her purse, her passport and her husband's car keys and ran from the house with her in-laws and her dog.

When they made it to the front of the house, they realized the smoke and flames were coming from the neighbouring home, which she knew was not occupied.

D'Aprile also came across the man who'd been frantically knocking at her door to alert her to the fire.

When she apologized for not answering the door, the man said he just wanted to make sure everyone was OK.

"He pulled over on the highway, he jumped the fence at the bottom of the berm and came knocking at our door," D'Aprile said.

When the blaze at the neighbouring house was extinguished, D'Aprile could see it had warped and melted the siding of her garage, along with some of the shingles, a window and part of the roof of her home. The heat from the flames also rippled the side of her husband's car.

Knowing that police are looking into the possibility that an arsonist was behind the fires, D'Aprile said she had been uneasy about going to sleep in her home the night after the blaze.

"These are people's homes and their life is in a home and it just, it's scary. And if people don't wake up or they don't get out in time, you know," she said.

'A wonderful man'

D'Aprile was sound asleep when the stranger knocked on her door, and she wonders what would have happened if he hadn't.

Even if she and her family members had managed to escape safely, she said the damage to her dream custom-built home would have been much greater.

"The mystery man, I don't know his name, he was just a wonderful man and he did more than what anyone else, I think, would usually do," said D'Aprile.

"They would just call 911 and report a fire but he just went above and beyond, and I'm very grateful."

All five fires are being investigated by the Saskatoon Fire Department and the Saskatoon Police Service.