Medal of Bravery
Awarded on: 1982-03-08
Invested on: 1982-06-29
William Charles Bier, M.B.
Wayne Whitbread, M.B.
Medal of Bravery
Responding to cries for help on 12 November 1979, William Bier and Wayne Whitbread dashed across a street in Kitimat to a burning house. A woman shouted to them from an upper window that her three-year-old son was downstairs. Without concern for their own lives, the two men entered the living room twice in attempts to save the child. When heat and heavy smoke forced them out, they realized that the woman and a man were trapped upstairs. The man had by then found the child hiding under the bed, tied sheets together and lowered him into the waiting arms of Mr. Whitbread. Meanwhile, Mr. Bier brought a ladder which enabled the woman and the man to climb down to safety. The latter escaped just as flames engulfed the bedroom.