Carp fire victims reunited with saviour

CARP – A wrong turn has never been more right for a Carp family who credits a lost motorist with saving their family’s life.

On Monday, July 6 a fire broke out in the garage of the Scherr family home on Diamondview Road near Carp. Matriarch Jolene Scherr was at home with her four children and husband at the time of the fire.

Looking through her front window, she saw a man furiously run up to her front door and desperately ringing her doorbell.

 “You guys got a fire going right now,” Kanata’s Scott Van Will can be heard telling Jolene in the doorbell camera footage. “You got a big fire going on.”

It the heat and panic of the moment, the Scherr family went in to survival mode to get out of the house and save their family.

“My two children were in rooms above that garage,” Scherr said a couple days after the fire (July 9). “I have no doubt he saved their lives. Sadly, we lost our home of nearly 25 years on Diamondview Road Monday evening. Thankfully everyone (including our dog) was evacuated to safety.”

While it took firefighters until 1 a.m. to finally put out the fire, things happened in a flash for the Scherr family, and they didn’t even get the name of the man who saved their life.

So, Jolene began her search on social media to track down and thank Van Will.

For Van Will and his daughter Leah, they weren’t even supposed to be Diamondview Road.

Van Will often drives down Diamondview Road because his family has horses at Silver Creek Ranch.

“We feed them every day, so we go by here every day, almost,” Van Will told CTV News yesterday.

Van Will says he and his daughter were on their way to Perth but instinct kicked in after turning down Diamondview Road so many times.

“The funniest thing was we weren’t even supposed to be there because it just happened to be that I took the wrong turn off the highway,” he said.

On July 15, the Scherr family was able to thank Van Will in person.

“It was just important (to find them) because we’ve had fires in Carp before where farms and things like that get devastated,” Jolene said. “Carp is one of a kind. Like, the community here is unbelievable.”

“It’s like, the bare minimum you can do is just make sure you’re checking that they know something’s going on,” Van Will said. “It’s like the neighbour leaving a garage door open, right?”

Scherr says the family’s intention is to rebuild on the property, adding they do not want to leave behind the area, view, or the community.

“I’m just so glad that Jolene and her family were safe,” said Van Will. “(They) are able to rebuild and have a life going forward.”