The 911 call came in at 6:42 a.m. It went to Sarah O’Brien, who was new enough with the Kitchener Fire Department that she wasn’t through her probation period.

On the other end was a young woman in a state of panic, reporting that her house was on fire. It was the first time O’Brien had dealt with a house fire call.

As she dispatched firefighters to the scene, she started asking the woman questions. Did she know how the fire began? Where in the house was she? Was there smoking coming into the room?

When she found out that the woman was in her bedroom, and smoke was making its way into the room, she instructed her to keep the door closed.

“You have a little gap at the bottom of your door, so you can put blankets there to keep the smoke out,” she said.

“I don’t have a blanket,” the woman replied.

“Do you have sweaters or clothes or anything?”

“I have a towel.”

“OK, use the towel.”

From there, O’Brien guided the woman over to her window. She told her to take the screen out, and then talked her through how to do that in detail.

“You’re going to pull that little plastic tab toward you, and then the screen should start to pop out,” she said.

O’Brien stayed on the phone with the woman for another two minutes, until firefighters arrived at her home on Blucher Street in Kitchener – talking in calm, measured tones the whole time, no matter how much the woman on the end of the line was panicking.

Five days later, the woman – who didn’t want her name published – is adamant that O’Brien saved her life.

“If it wasn’t for her, I don’t know what I would have done,” she said in an interview.

“She just talked me through everything.”

The fire happened last Thursday. The woman says she was studying for an exam when she started to smell smoke.

“I just opened up the door, and it was like a wall of black,” she said.

With her path to the home’s exits blocked, she stayed in her bedroom and waited for firefighters to pull her to safety through the window. (They were also able to rescue three dogs and a cat.)

The woman, who already wanted to be a firefighter prior to last week, says that experience has only made her more determined to take her life in that direction.

“I don’t want people to go through what I did,” she said.

“I want to prevent that.”

For O’Brien, the call was unlike any she’d taken before. She says she drew on her previous experience as a dispatcher for paramedics, as well as lessons she’d learned as a kid from her father, who worked as a firefighter and a window installer.

Kitchener deputy fire chief Rob Martin says the incident is a rare case in which a situation with the potential for “immense tragedy” instead resulted in an “amazing outcome” – thanks not only to O’Brien, but to everyone involved in the fire department’s response.

“It works like an orchestra, where everything is working together in harmony,” he said.

Damage from the fire is estimated at $150,000. Fire officials suspect it started with a faulty microwave.

They also say the home didn’t have a smoke detector – a situation that has since been remedied.

With reporting by Abigail Bimman