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Burnaby firefighter's Mandarin skills help reunite lost woman with family

A Burnaby firefighter’s Mandarin studies helped police reunite a 79-year-old woman with her family this Saturday.
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A Burnaby firefighter’s Mandarin studies helped police reunite a 79-year-old woman with her family this Saturday.

A concerned citizen, thinking the woman might be lost or have dementia, brought her to Firehall 1 on Sperling Avenue by Canada Way in the evening, according to the fire department.

The pair were standing in front of the station when one of the fire engines returned from a call.

The woman didn’t speak English, so firefighters tried to communicate using Google translate after calling police.

After the RCMP arrived, their attempts to communicate with the woman didn’t get them much further, according to the fire department, so the department called Heidar Haddou, a firefighter at the Metrotown fire station.

Haddou had taught English in China for a year and taken about six months of Mandarin studies before joining the department.

It's been a useful skill to have as a Burnaby firefighter, he told the NOW, and the experience with the woman has motivated him to brush up on his Mandarin skills he said.

"More and more we're coming across calls with language barriers," he said.

Haddou said he was a bit nervous at first talking to the senior via speaker phone from his fire station, but he managed to got enough information from her for the RCMP to track down her file, find her address and return her to her daughter’s house near Edmonds Street and Kingsway.

“A job well done by all concerned,” assistant fire Chief George Assaf wrote in a report on the incident.