A Pemberton pizza shop owner turned local hero said stopping a dangerous fire last month was a matter of being in the right place at the right time. Riel Rock was leaving work late on Tuesday, Aug. 22 when he discovered something amiss at Portage Station. His quick-thinking is being praised by his neighbours, especially the businesses that share the communal space.
The Nest Early Learning Centre took to Facebook to share the close miss.
“We got very lucky last night!” they wrote in a post to the Pemberton Community Forum page. “We are so grateful that Riel, owner of Backcountry Pizza, spotted this fire and put it out last night or this morning could be a very different story for the businesses and residences of Portage Station, and who knows how else it would have impacted our town. He caught it just in time! I can’t imagine the potential consequences.”
However, pizza boss Rock believes he was only lucky to catch the fire.
“I just see it as good fortune above anything. I just happened to stay a little longer at the shop that night,” he said. “Typically, I go out the front doors, but I chose to go out the back door that night. This led me around to right where the fire took place. I just happened to go by it and notice it.”
Adrenaline kicked in when the business owner spotted the blaze in the planter out on the patio.
“When something dramatic happens, you feel like it’s a long moment when it’s actually a quick moment. A lot goes through your head,” he said.
Rock decided to take matters into his own hands just in the nick of time. Luckily, the water hose was right next to the fire.
“It had three big kinks in it, and the water actually didn’t come out,” Rock recalled. “Then there was a comical big spray of water everywhere. I was trying to direct it onto the fire itself. There were a lot of obstacles but it didn’t take long to put the fire out.”
Once the fire was under control, Rock’s investigative work began. He was surprised it grew so strong just steps away from his hard-working team.
“I initially thought that it could have been the last customers we had out on the patio. It was quite an established fire by the time I got to it,” he said.
“It had gone quite deep into the flower box, deeper than if it had been from a discarded cigarette from the people who had only left 15 minutes earlier.”
Rock pulled out the flower box in case there was a hot spot that could reignite the fire. Here, he found the cause of the chaos.
“In between the flats, somebody had put what I suspect was a doobie in between the horizontal pieces of wood,” he said. “I don’t know if they were a customer of mine who stashed it there thinking to come back. Maybe they were high and forgot about it … It had been smouldering for a long time, which is how it was able to get such strength once it started.”
Rock worries about what could have happened if he had locked up the shop a little earlier in the busy business complex, as the smouldering went undetected for so long.
“One of my staff had mentioned a campfire smell as he was mopping in the front. Even then, he had smelled it. It had been smouldering for at least 50 minutes before I got to it, probably a lot longer.”
Rock explained a combination of flammable materials, fire, and timing could have been a recipe for disaster had he not been there.
“It would have been quite dangerous if it had gone up,” he said. “The main takeaway was seeing how a little careless act could have led to something so severe, especially in the context of the forest fires we have had.”
Some local business owners are now calling for security cameras to be installed to prevent incidents like this happening again. However, Rock believes it was likely a simple accident and a reminder of how dangerous a fire can become if left unnoticed.
“Some people are calling for cameras. I don’t think that would have stopped it,” he said. “I think somebody probably got too baked and forgot about it.”
Reached for comment, Pemberton Fire Rescue said it did not attend the fire, as no 911 call was made, adding “the Village of Pemberton would like to stress the importance of reporting all fires to Pemberton Fire Rescue by calling 911.
