A couple and three children died in a fire Sunday in Davidson, a small community in Saskatchewan.
The Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) announced Monday that it had responded the day before to assist firefighters at the scene of a residential building fire that left five people dead, two octogenarians and three minors.
An 80-year-old man and an 81-year-old woman were initially rescued from the fire, but they were pronounced dead in hospital. The bodies of the three children were then discovered in the rubble, the RCMP said.
The connection between the octogenarian couple and their children has not been clarified.
“They were very good people. […] The oldest was very active in school. Maybe not in the front row of the volleyball team, but he was the first to cheer and the other two kids were great,” a neighbor, Trudy Smith, told CTV News.
The tragedy rocked the small community of just under a thousand residents halfway between Regina and Saskatoon.
“The entire community is devastated by this loss and our thoughts are with the family,” Davidson Mayor Elaine Ebenal said on CBC.
The RCMP has launched an investigation to determine the cause of the fire. No hypothesis has been proposed at this time.
A trauma-focused firefighter team also left Saskatoon to support their Davidson counterparts and help them recover psychologically from the tragedy.