First Lieutenant Yevgeny Lunin and Lieutenant Pavel Istomin were on patrol in the village of Kuragino when they witnessed heavy smoke rising out of a garage next to a house, police said in a statement Monday.

Two traffic police officers have been commended in the Siberian region of Krasnoyarsk for averting a tragedy when they rushed to help put out a fire armed with nothing more than snowballs.

They alerted the fire department and helped facilitate the evacuation of residents before the flames spread.

“The guardians of law and order continued to hurl snow at the burning fence and garage gates before firefighters arrived,” the Krasnoyarsk regional branch of the Interior Ministry said.

The fire started after a car parked in a garage short-circuited, it said.

The statement added that the two traffic police officers would be awarded for helping to avoid the tragedy.