Congratulations to Radenko Knezevic, who recently won a 2009 Employee Excellence Award from the Canadian Urban Transit Association!

Radenko is a transit operator with the Coast Mountain Bus Company, one of our operating subsidiaries. And on July 28 this year, he saved four people from a Burnaby house fire!

Driving along Bond Street, Radenko was on his way to collect early morning riders at a SkyTrain station, when he noticed a plume of smoke rising from a house.

He parked his bus immediately and called 911, then went to alert the residents of the house by pounding on the door. When no one answered, he went back to the bus to honk the horn, then pounded on the door again. Luckily, the residents woke up and took shelter on Radenko’s bus.

Radenko then went around the house and saw the fire had started from a hot tub motor and had spread all the way up the side of the house. He turned on the garden hose to stop the fire from spreading until the fire crews arrived at the scene.

So well done, Radenko! His win makes this the third straight year that CMBC operators have won an Employee Excellence Award.

Operator Che Florant won last year after he came to the aid of a distraught single mother who had left her wallet on another bus. And Jas Grewal won the award for fighting off attackers beating a boy near a bus loop.

And strangely enough, Radenko’s rescue is the second time in recent history that CMBC staff has helped people out of a burning building. Check out the February 29, 2008 Buzzer, which tells how servicemen James Le Troy and Nick Accettura saved three people from a house fire!