VIDEO: Kamloops woman thanks man who helped her and daughter escape an apartment fire

KAMLOOPS – What started off as a regular Tuesday morning turned into a close call for Brittany Brown and her one-year-old daughter Jemma.

The single mother says she took on too many tasks at once which resulted in a grease fire igniting on her kitchen stove. Brown says she left the kitchen briefly but by the time she got back, flames were already high and she started to panic.

"I started screaming and I ran to grab Jemma," she says. "I opened my apartment door screaming 'help' so that if somebody in the building heard me, they could come and help me."

Brown says she acted quickly trying to put out the fire herself. In the middle of the chaos, Brown says she heard a man yell to her from her patio.

It was Austen Martin, a 19-year-old employee who was working at Penny Pinchers. He says he heard the screams of a woman and a young child in distress while he was taking out the garbage behind the second-hand store in the city's North Shore.

"I thought it was someone getting assaulted, but then I saw the smoke," he says, adding that he ran back to his boss to get her to call 911.

He was hoping by the time he got back, the woman and her baby would already be outside, but when he did return he saw they were still inside and he quickly jumped into action.

Watch the full report below.

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