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Nishant and Indra Sharma with Alex Hrycyk. What the Sharma house looked like after the fire.
Heroic act honoured with Medal of Bravery
Baie d'Urfé man saved neighbour from fire
Alycia Ambroziak
The Gazette
Thursday, December 18, 2008
Like many true heroes, Alexander Hrycyk says anyone would have done what he did in the early morning hours of Dec. 16, 2005.
That’s when Hrycyk, then 21 years old, ran into his best friend’s smoke-filled house in Baie d’Urfé to save his friend’s 81-year-old grandmother.
“It didn’t feel like it was that big of a deal at the time,” said Hrycyk, who was last week awarded a Medal of Bravery from Governor General Michaëlle Jean.
“I’m quite happy to be receiving the medal, but it’s not something I brag about.”
Hrycyk, now 24 and in his last semester as a history major at Concordia University, might not like to brag about the events on that snowy night, but his family and friends are more than willing to tell the tale of his act of courage.
Hrycyk was asleep at his parent’s home on Lakeview Ave., when at about 1 a.m. on Dec. 16 three years ago, his best friend, Nishant Sharma, pounded on the front door.
When Hrycyk’s father answered the door, he saw Sharma, shaking with an injured foot, telling him he had been forced to jump out of his second-floor bedroom window because the house was on fire. His grandmother, whose name is Indra Vati but who everyone calls Mati – was still in the burning house next door.
“I had remembered the fire drills my father taught us as youngsters and I instinctively knew what to do,” said Sharma who was sleeping in his sister’s old room that night because he was taking care of her dog, Fuego, while she was away.
“There was so much smoke, Fuego – which means fire in Spanish – woke me up with his barking,” Sharma said.
Because the smoke was so thick he had no choice but to jump. The dog did not survive the blaze.
Sharma said that before running to his neighbour’s house, he twice tried to run into the house to get his grandmother but was repelled by a wall of smoke.
“The moment I told Alex and his father what had happened, Alex ran barefoot through the knee-deep snow over to the burning house and through the front door, despite the fact that it was filled with smoke.
“The flames were six-feet above the roof,” said Sharma.
Hrycyk said that when he entered the house, he could hear Mati calling for her grandson, thinking he was still trapped in the house.
“I found her and told her Nishant was outside, at our house, but she didn’t understand, she was sure he was trapped upstairs, so I just picked her up and dragged her out,” Hrycyk said.
He and Shamar had been best friends since they were 6 years old and that Mati was like a grandmother to him.
Mercedes Beaulieu said she and her husband, Rashter Sharma, returned from their vacation immediately upon hearing news of the fire.
“If it wasn’t for Alex, Mati would not be alive today,” she said. “When we got back, the firefighters told us that 30 seconds later, and both Mati and Alex would have died in the fire.”
The Shamars have since rebuilt their house and they, including Mati, are still neighbours to Hrycyk and his family.
“What Alex did was a great act of bravery,” Rashter Sharma said. “A lot of people would have just called 911.”
Alex’s father, Daniel, is very proud of his son’s act of bravery.
“What he did was quite something, so selfless and, at the same time, so dangerous,” said Daniel Hrycyk, who, along with his wife Linda, run the Learning Tree daycare centre in DDO, where Alex has worked part time as a student and where he plans to work full-time upon graduation.
As for Mati, who does not speak English but who spoke through her son Rashter, she simply described Alex Hrycyk as “a god-send that night.”
Marie-Paule Thorn, of the Rideau Hall press office, said Hrycyk, along with 14 other brave Canadians – including Montreal Police Constable Nathalie Hervieux, a Dorval resident, who on May 30, 2005, put her life in danger while saving a woman who had attempted suicide at St. Joseph’s Oratory – will be awarded the medals of bravery at an official ceremony in Ottawa sometime in the new year.