By FireRescue1 Staff
WINDSOR, Nova Scotia — A veteran firefighter reunited with a man he rescued as a baby 25 years ago.
Hants Journal reported that former firefighter Greg Lake, who served on active duty for 31 years and currently provides dispatching services, met Daniel Graham, who he rescued on Nov. 11, 1992 from a burning apartment.
“I said to the chief that it’s right next door to my old house, which was right around the corner. The chief, myself and the other deputy, broke rank and we ran up around,” Lake recalled about the rescue. “We could see the smoke coming out from around the door when we first got there. There was just a whisper of smoke, nothing real heavy.”
After Deputy Fire Chief John Sweet was unable to enter the home due to heavy smoke, Lake ran around the building where Sandra Graham was holding her baby outside of the window.
Lake used an overcoat to make a safety net and prepared to catch the child.
“I just wrapped it around both arms, held it close to my chest, stood right under the window and I said ‘drop the baby,’” he said. “She looked down to see what I had and she dropped it. I thought ‘uh oh, I have to catch him now.’”
The mother was rescued shortly after when firefighters arrived with a ladder truck, and Lake said “it all happened in about 15 to 20 minutes.”
Lake and Graham recently met for the first time to talk about the heroic rescue.
“I’ve been meaning to meet him for quite a while,” Graham said, who added that he found out about the rescue while looking through his mother’s photo albums.
The two grabbed a bite to eat and poured over newspaper clippings and photos from the incident, and Lake said he doesn’t consider himself a hero for saving Graham.
“I was doing my job. I joined the fire department to save life and limb. It was something special but I didn’t really think it was worth all of the hullabaloo that they were making of it,” Lake said.