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Whitby Fire Smoke Damaged My Life

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Hey folks,
I was very, VERY iffy and back and forth on even starting up a GoFundMe for this, but I had a lot of people suggest I do this, so I figured why not. Here is the story if you're not already familiar :  I live in the apartments above the stores downtown Whitby. On Friday April 3rd at about 2:30 am in the bar Jimmy O'Tooles, a fire broke out in the basement and turned into a HUGE fire (which you can see from the picture - even just Google 'Whitby Fire' for more details and crazy pics. The place is a huge gaping black hole now), calling in the fire deprtments from both towns beside me. This building is attached to my apartment building. Even though the fire started at 2:30am, I woke up at 7am to the smell of burning building - for some reason, nobody evacuated us (or my neighbors) for 4 and a half hours while the building burned, so it was a mad dash to get me and my girlfriend out and a scramble to get our 4 cats out, which they would not let us do for well over an hour. The finally rushed us back in and helped us find our pets and we got them out before the entire downtown was covered in a thick, yellow smoke that was so bad, you literally couldn't breathe, so we hopped in the car and took the kitties to Violet's place. The building burned for over 10 hours, and while thankfully the fire itself did not spread to my apartment, the smoke damage is quite bad and apparently very toxic thanks to the asbestos in the building that burnt down. I'm going to have to get rid of all my furniture, couches, chairs, my bed, a lot of my art supplies (I have to check and see how bad the unused canvases are, but the way everything reeks, I'll likely have to chuck them out), a bunch of supplies for the Quiet Room Bears, as well as a few completed ones may also need ot be thrown out. I lost a TON of food in my fridge and freezer (the building has no gas, water or power), Violet had about $800 in fabric (she is a costume and clothing designer) which, like all the furniture, REEKS of toxic burned building and will be unusable. I am hoping all my finished personal paintings will be okay, too, otherwise I will have lost a many, many of my own personal favorite pieces of art. Hopefully they will be fine, but I have to make another trip to collect them and I'll know better then. I have been told that I might not even be able to return for a couple weeks, which poses a problem : Violet was supposed to move INTO my place with me at the end of April - she has already given her notice for her place, and we're now running the risk of becoming 'between homes' for who knows how long. We may have to place all of our things in storage for a while and either motel it up, or try and stay with friends and family until the place is fixed up. So we're going to have to find a new place super soon, in which we'll need first and last month's rent, as well as moving expenses, new furniture, all that jazz. In the meantime, my kitty, Bruce Wayne has not eaten, drank water or even gone to the bathroom since Friday (he licked about a tea spoon worth of wet cat food yesterday and thats it), so we are also going to have to bring him to the vet for a check up to see what the hell is going on with him as well, so there is another bill we'll have to pay. Thankfully the other cats seem to be doing well.
We feel extremely lucky that we made it out when we did. It's terrifying to think we were sleeping for so long as the fire burned right next door and that the fire department didn't even know that we were in the building. When they realized we were still in there, they all freaked out and rushed to get us out as quickly as possible.
We are so thankful that we got the cats out when we did too, because if it was even 5 minutes later when the yellow smoke blanketed the streets, we would not have been allowed to go back for them and they would have  died from smoke inhilation.

Again, I was very iffy on starting a GoFundMe for this, and I didn't even know what to set for a 'goal' - honestly, if we got even a tiny fraction of that, I would be extremely grateful. I'm not expecting to get anywhere near it, I just needed to throw a number up there so that was just a rough estimate. It's not even the fact that we have to replace things like furniture, but our art and sewing supplies is how we help pay our bills and the fact that we're very likely going to have to throw it out sets us back a lot in money and prodictivity.
ALSO, if you're not into donating for nothing in return, which is totally cool, please feel free to buy some art prints or some of the mini figures I make from my etsy store - etsy.com/shop/quietroombears
If my completed artwork IS okay, I'll likely be putting almost all of it up for sale there. Even the hard to part-with ones will likely be up for grabs.
I honestly hate asking for help, and I normally avoid it because I don't feel like I super deserve anything, but if you feel inclined to help, I would be ridiculously grateful and I'll send you an art print or 2 if you would like and a 'thank you, you rule, one day children will sing songs about you' thank you note.
Thanks again, everyone, I appreciate any help you can provide.
Lee.

Organizer

Lee Howard
Organizer
Whitby, ON

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