Jan-Erik Kuoljok's two sons and Jan-Erik's cousin Åsa were sleeping in the cabin in Guorpak in Jokkmokksfjällen, after a long day of reindeer herding.
He himself was just about to go to bed when he smelled smoke.
- I checked the stove, but the glow was fine.
I walked around and then I looked up at the ceiling.
There was the smoke, he says.
"Only then did the thoughts come"
The family managed to get out at the last moment before the cabin burned to the ground.
And the day after the fire, there was continued work on separating reindeer before moving to the winter pastures.
- It was only the next day in the evening when we got to Jokkmokk that the thoughts came, says Jan-Erik Kuoljok, reindeer owner in Sirge's Sami village.
How did the thoughts go?
- What would have happened if I hadn't been awake?
Then I don't think we would have lived today.
Such thoughts were what came.
It was really hard.
The importance of knowing how to act
In the cottage village in Guorpak there were apartments/rooms for four families.
Jan-Erik Kuoljok woke up and got the others out before calling 112.
- People are thinking a lot now about what happened and how to act.
We talk to the children about what is good to know and know.
Hear him talk about the incident in the clip above.
That was how NSD first told about the fire in Guorpak.