A northern community is counting its blessings and grieving a loss after a house fire in St. Theresa Point.
The blaze broke out around 12:30 p.m. on Sunday on the reserve located about 500 kilometres north of Winnipeg. There were six children, aged 2-months to 13-years old, in the home at the time.
A band police constable was the first to arrive at the scene and he ran into the burning home.
"I felt a bed in front of me, right in front of me, and there's a baby sitting on the bed crying in the smoke," Constable Timothy Mason said.
He rescued a 16-month-old girl Qualynn Harper, but the house was filled with fire and smoke and Mason couldn't get to a two-month old infant in time.
Mason didn't give up and was finally able to reach the infant by cutting a hole through the bedroom wall of the residence with a chain saw.
Once he was back in the house, he grabbed a bundle of blankets and found two-month-old Erabella Harper bundled inside.
Both children were taken to the local nursing station for treatment, where Erabella was pronounced dead and arrangements were made to fly Qualynn to Winnipeg for treatment for smoke inhalation.
Valerie Harper, the children's aunt is now trying to deal with her loss.
"It's really hard," she said.
Investigators with the Manitoba Office of the Fire Commissioner said the fire began in a chimney attached to a wood-burning stove and spread through the attic and the rest of the house.
The family was using a wood-burning stove for warmth because they didn't have a furnace. Like most homes on the reserve, they also didn't have water, so the community firefighters who put out the blaze doused the flames with snow.
"We have fire hydrants along the road, but we can't really use them because we don't have hoses," said band councillor Michael Harper.
The community's fire truck was broken when the fire broke out.
-with reports from CTV's Jill Macyshon and Caroline Barghout
