'Sheer relief': Couple escape fire that destroyed their store east of Whitecourt

After closing the Blue Ridge General Store on Saturday night, Anne Lee was getting ready for bed and chatting with her youngest daughter on the phone when she noticed lights flickering.

"She thought that there was actually an electrical issue, and so she went outside and saw that the living room was completely engulfed in flames," said her eldest daughter, Rebecca Lee.

Lee was at home in Edmonton at the time, overhearing her younger sister speaking with her mother on speaker phone.

"After that, all we heard were screams and then the phone dropping," she said.

In panic, the sisters called neighbours and 911, then jumped in the car to drive from Edmonton to Blue Ridge, the hamlet east of Whitecourt where their parents run a convenience store.

While they were en route, a family friend called to say their parents were safe after escaping the burning building. 

"The sheer relief that we had when we were driving and heard their voices over the phone — I think that in itself was just all we needed," Lee told CBC News on Monday.

Nikita Ganovicheff, a communications co-ordinator for Woodlands County, said firefighters responded to the fire at 8:40 p.m. Saturday.

Twenty-three firefighters from Blue Ridge, Anselmo, Goose Lake, Fort Assiniboine and Whitecourt remained on the scene until 1:40 a.m. Sunday, with the Blue Ridge crew staying longer to remove debris with heavy equipment. 

No one was injured in the fire and investigators have not yet determined its cause, Ganovicheff said.

Lee said her parents are still processing the loss of the store they have owned for nearly a decade.

She said her father, James, kept going back to the scene to see if parts of the building were salvageable, but none was.

Within hours, the couple's livelihood and part-time home, filled with family photos, had burned to the ground.

"They couldn't even describe it in words and it was just an absolute horror," Lee said.