Lola a real lifesaver

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This article was published 01/11/2024 (598 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

There is no doubt in Lawrence Medd’s mind that his three-year-old French bulldog Lola is a hero.

The 63-year-old, who normally works as a millwright in Edmonton, was spending the first night of an extended visit with his father Bill Medd on Oct. 20 when a fire broke out in the middle of the night at his father’s duplex in Killarney.

“If she would not have alerted us, we would be talking about different things at this point,” Lawrence said of his pet dog, “or we would not be talking at all.”

Lawrence had just arrived from Edmonton to visit his 84-year-old father, following the recent death of his mother, Bill’s wife Christine. Lawrence’s sister had just finished her visit, and now it was his turn to offer some companionship and deal with his mother’s affairs, so he came down from Alberta to spend the week.

The father and son had gone to bed at around 10 p.m. on Oct. 19, and Lawrence described himself as “dead asleep” when about five hours later Lola started jumping on the end of Lawrence’s bed.

“You know she heard something or sensed something was going on, and she did not quit until she got my attention,” Lawrence told the Sun. “When Lola finally woke us up, it sounded like a major hailstorm or something, something hitting the roof, right? But it was the crackling and the popping of the fire, and as soon as I opened my bedroom door, the whole interior of the house was glowing orange.

“I’m sure we were within a minute or two of death. It was a very grim situation.”

Fire investigators told Lawrence that the blaze started in the crawl space and breached the house on the west side of the building where the electricity came into the structure. Once the fire hit the vinyl siding, Lawrence said it became an inferno in mere minutes.

“And I was able, like I got my dog to my truck, I ran back into that burning building to rescue my father and got him out. And then there was still one more lady that lived behind him. And, you know, I pounded on her door until we got her out.”

In an interview with The Killarney Guide earlier this month, Bill Medd said that the duplex was only recently built.

“We don’t know yet for sure how it started, but the duplex is only 10 years old,” Bill said. “We thought we were safe.”

Bill went outside barefoot and in his underpants when he got out of the building. He had burned his foot after stepping on what may have been molten vinyl. He was eventually transported by EMS to Killarney’s Tri-Lake Hospital for treatment to his burned foot.

Next door in the duplex, 85-year-old Margaret Chatham heard her smoke alarm go off, sometime before Lawrence came to get her out.

“I got up to look, but I couldn’t see anything,” Chatham told the Killarney Guide. “Until I looked outside, and then I saw the orange glow, and Lawrence was pounding on my door, on the window.”

The Killarney Turtle Mountain Fire Department received the call at 2:25 a.m. on Oct. 20 and were on the scene for eight hours, Fire Chief Troy Cuvelier told the Killarney Guide.

At the time of the Killarney Guide’s Oct. 25 publication, the Office of the Fire Commissioner had not released the official cause of the fire. The Sun attempted to reach the Office of the Fire Commissioner for further comment, but did not receive an update by press time.

The duplex and all its contents were a complete loss. In fact, Bill said the only thing he managed to save from the fire were the underpants he was wearing.

“They asked me (at the hospital) what to do with my underpants, and because they were the only thing I had left from the fire, I told them to throw the darn things away,” Bill said.

Lawrence told The Brandon Sun that his father is a retired conservation officer, and that hunting was a big part of his life — and still was.

“Even at 85, he still hunts,” Lawrence said.

As a result, however, firefighters had to be called off from tending to the fire when ammunition that had been stored in the garage began to explode.

“You just let it burn, because it was too dangerous for them to go in there, knowing that there was shotgun shells and 22 shells.”

The elder Medd even lost the urn holding his wife’s ashes, he said. But in a strange twist, her recent death may have saved the life of her husband and neighbour.

“We might not both have got out of here if Lawrence wasn’t here, with Lola,” Bill told the Guide. “For sure, I wouldn’t have.”

Since the fire, the Medd father and son have found shelter at another son’s residence in town. The home is empty while Bill’s other son is down south for the winter. Lawrence says his father plans to rebuild his residence.

Meanwhile Chatham, who also lost everything in the fire and has been staying with her daughter-in-law these last several days, is set for a new home in Killarney’s Royal Manor as of today.

Lawrence says his family is in good spirits, and they have been supported by the local community.

For Lola, however, Lawrence’s much-loved canine has been christened with a new name — Lola the Great — and given every comfort he could give her since her heroic act saved all their lives.

“I tell you what, she’s had steak and we went down to the Beach Hut. The girls there made her a nice big plate of grilled chicken breast. Only charged me $2 for it. And you know, everywhere she’s been welcomed, almost in every store in this town — except the grocery store. I haven’t tried to take her in there, but I know they’d let her go in there too,” Lawrence said.

“Everybody wants to feed her. Like I said, every store that we (enter) she walks right down the hall like she owns the place. Yup, everybody is thinking that she’s a very good little girl.”

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