It was in the wee hours on September 3, 2019, in Edsbyn, Sweden. Emma Schols heard screaming from downstairs. Her youngest boys ages 4 and 3 had wandered down to play. The television room was already consumed by fire. By the time Emma reached them, smoke had turned the air black.
Instinctively, she threw herself over her sons like a human shield and pushed toward the front door. When it opened, oxygen rushed in and the fire exploded toward them. She felt her back ignite. She shoved both boys outside to safety. Then she locked the door from the inside — so their panic couldn’t drag them back in.
Four more children were still upstairs. The staircase was already burning. Despite the hazard, Emma climbed it anyway. “For each step I thought that this is not possible,” she later said, “but then I thought that it must go for four of my children who are still up there. It was so hot that the soles of my feet started to drop. They just hung like threads.”
At the top of the stairs, Emma found her 9-year-old daughter had already jumped from the balcony to get help. Her 11-year-old son had lowered a ladder for his siblings. But when Emma counted heads, one child was missing. It was the baby, 1-year-old, still inside.
Her children begged her not to go back. The smoke was too thick. The fire too great. But Emma didn’t answer. She turned around and crawled back into the flames, dragging her burned body through smoke so dense she could barely see. Her lungs were failing. Every movement defied what her body could endure. And then she found the baby standing in her crib, crying, terrified.
“I was so terribly tired but could see through the smoke how Mollie stood there in her crib and cried,” Emma recalled. “Then I suddenly got such an enormous force and managed to get to my feet and lift her up.”
Emma carried her baby to the balcony. Her oldest had the ladder ready. Emma climbed down with the baby on her hip. When her feet hit the ground, her body finally gave out and she collapsed in the grass. All six children were alive — noone seriously injured.
Emma had burns covering 93 percent of her body — injuries doctors said were almost always fatal. She spent three weeks on a ventilator. She endured more than 20 surgeries and months of rehabilitation. Before losing consciousness, she made her children a promise – that she would come home soon.
When she finally woke, her first question wasn’t about her injuries or her pain. She asked: “Are my children alive?” Every single one.
The reunion was hard. Some of her children were frightened by her transformed body. Mollie — the baby she had crawled through fire to save — didn’t recognize her at first.
But Emma kept her promise to her children. Step by step, she learned to walk again; to use her hands; to hold her children.
In December 2020, Sweden honored Emma Schols at the Svenska Hjältar Gala, naming her Lifesaver of the Year. Her eldest son moved the nation to tears: “Sometimes I think I will never see Mum again. But now we see Mum almost every day and that makes me happy.” When people called her a hero, Emma said what she had always said: “If I gave birth to six children, I will get all six out.”
Yes, Emma’s scars remain, very visible and permanent. But to Emma, they are not reminders of loss, they are proof of her love for her children. Proof that on one burning night in September 2019, a mother made a decision that could not be reasoned with, negotiated with, or stopped.
Emma Schols did not run into that fire because she was fearless. She ran in because she had already decided how the night would end. She made absolutely certain all six of her children made it out.
Jesus Christ has great love for each and everyone of us. He loved us enough to sacrifice himself for us. Do you know Him?
Romans 8:38-39: “For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
Tagged: God’s love, perseverance
