Victoria arson investigation underway after gas poured into home while family of 5 slept

Police and firefighters are investigating after a family of five, including three children, narrowly escaped their Victoria home as it was destroyed by arson overnight.

Yuriy Vyshnevskyy, a Ukrainian Catholic church pastor, says he woke up around 1 a.m. to his wife frantically calling out to him from the first floor of their home.

A mother, father and three children were all inside the home when the fire broke out.

She was awoken by a "gulp, gulp" sound as gasoline was being poured through the mail slot next to their front door, Vyshnevskyy said.

Before Vyshnevskyy reached the bottom of the stairs, the gasoline was set ablaze while his three daughters, ages 5, 7 and 11, slept upstairs.

Firefighters were called to the two-storey heritage home at 1112 Caledonia Ave. at 1:15 a.m. and immediately found the mother clinging to a second-storey window as the house burned.

"The flames were going from the ground level all the way to the roof," Victoria fire battalion chief Doug Carey told CTV News. "There was also a female occupant of the house clinging to the window ledge on the left side of the house here."

Firefighters attacked the flames with water while others got a ladder up to the window and rescued the woman from the ledge.

"The father ran down the stairs through the flames to escape the house," Carey said. "The mom woke up the children, took them into the one bedroom and shut the door behind her and then passed one child through the window to dad below, then another child down."