INUVIK - Two people in Inuvik might owe their lives to Vince Sharpe, who pulled them from a burning trailer on Nov. 17.

Sharpe said it all started when he was driving his truck on Saturday afternoon, near the Balsam trailer court.

Vince Sharpe saw black smoke rising from a trailer home on Nov. 17. He crawled into the burning building and pulled two people to safety before calling for help. - Philippe Morin/NNSL photo

"I was going out on Industrial Road to check on my property there," he said.

"I drove past the trailer and it looked like it had smoke coming out. It didn't look right so I backed up and had a second look. And sure enough, there was all this black smoke coming out the door."

Sharpe said he didn't think anyone was inside at first. But when he approached the trailer, a young woman ran out gasping for air.

"There was a woman coming out the door, she was coughing and spitting," he recalled.

"She told me 'my dad's in there', and I asked where. She said she didn't know."

A former firefighter and captain in the Inuvik Fire Department, Sharpe said he knew smoke could kill.

So he got on his stomach and crawled into the burning building.

"I crawled on my belly and I looked around the kitchen area. There was an old man laying on the floor. He had already gone down, he was unconscious, so I grabbed a hold of him and pulled him out the door," he said.

When Sharpe emerged from the trailer, the woman told him there was someone else inside. But where?

Thick black smoke filled the trailer and Sharpe couldn't stand up or see farther than his arm.

Nevertheless, he crawled back inside.

He recalls coughing and tapping, teary-eyed from the smoke, trying to find someone.

"He wasn't in the kitchen or the living room, so I went down the hallway. He had succumbed to smoke and he was lying on the floor. I grabbed him by his shirt and pulled him back," he said.

But as he tried to exit the trailer, Sharpe found himself turned around.

He had accidentally kicked shut the door and now found himself trapped with the unconscious young man.

"The fire hadn't rolled out of the bedroom, so it wasn't that hot, but there was a terrible amount of smoke," he said.

"You could barely see maybe three feet and that was on the floor."

Finally, Sharpe's hands found the door handle and he escaped, dragging the man with him.

He then called the fire department and police on his cellphone.

Inuvik Fire Chief Al German said the fire department used 19 firefighters and a pumper truck to contain the blaze.

An ambulance brought the three tenants to Inuvik Regional Hospital where they were treated for smoke inhalation.

The three could not be reached as of press time.

German said he was personally thankful to Sharpe.

"As they say, once a firefighter always a firefighter. He never quit," German said, adding Sharpe has already been named an honorary member for life.

Sharpe said the rescue was the third in his firefighting career.

He saved a two-month old baby from a blaze in 1974 and said he once helped a woman in a wheelchair escape a log house fire on Kingminga street around 1978.

While he didn't expect to crawl into a burning trailer at the age of 60, Sharpe said he felt compelled.

"If there's somebody that needs help and you're the only one there - what are you gonna do? That's the way I look at it," he said.