N.W.T. mining worker gets bravery medal for fire rescue

A man who saved a co-worker from a burning drilling rig has been honoured with the Governor General's medal for bravery.

John Cerne, now 32, was working at the Nechalacho mine site near Thor Lake, N.W.T., in 2012 when a hydraulic fuel line burst and flames engulfed his body.

"I looked down and I was on fire from head to toe," Cerne said from his home in Penticton, B.C.

The fire started because of a failed hydraulic fitting.

"We were cementing a diamond hole up and a hydraulic line burst, it hit some open flame, and basically it was spewing vaporized hydraulic oil all over the drill shack, and it lit up instantaneously."

Cerne escaped the drill shack with second-degree burns, but his co-worker Andrew Cormier was trapped inside.

"He was in the back corner of the drill shack laying in a pool of burning oil. At that point I got up, ran back in there and dragged him out by his collar."

Cormier was already on fire; Cerne "body-smothered" him to get the flames out. Then, he grabbed both the fire extinguishers on the rig and tried to put out the fire, but the flames were too intense.

"There was steel melting down, all the wood was gone," says Cerne. "There were 50-foot flames going up the tower."

With no gloves and most of their clothes destroyed by fire, Cerne put Cormier on the back of a snowmobile and drove two kilometres into camp.

"It was a brisk ride," he says, especially for Cormier. "He was badly injured and he is trying to hang onto me with burnt hands and no skin left on them."

Cerne suffered frostbite on eight of his fingers from the ride. It took four hours for emergency medical transport to reach camp.

"The shock set in on Andrew very hard," he says. "He was in severe pain for those four hours until the medevac got to us."

Cerne spent four weeks in hospital recovering. Cormier was stabilized in Yellowknife and then flown to Toronto to undergo skin grafts.

Cerne says there have since been changes in the way the company handles hoses and fittings. He also says the incident has changed his life.

"I'm definitely happy to be here," he says. "Take every minute in, because you never know when you could be on the other end of that."