Rebuilding Cannons home after fire

My name is Lucas, on the morning of Friday, March 24th, my family had to go through losing what helps make an apartment a home. That morning a fire broke out on our porch displacing my neighbors, their families, and mine. We lost our belongs and more so all the books, clothes, toys, furniture, and other toddler / baby supplies we had. My wife Christina is ~8mo pregnant with our second kid. Thankfully we escaped our home before any smoke got to us because my son wakes up early and it was about that time the fire started.

By the time the firefighters got the fire out, smoke had already caused its damage. Destroying everything especially in the first 2/3rds of the complex, which had our living room and kids bedroom, ie all his and her stuff. We managed to barracade ourselves in the master bedroom as we grabed what few items and our cat before having to escape out the window to ensure we didn't get too exposed to the smoke.

Your funds will help us rebuild what matters most for our home and that's my kids happiness, creativity, and future. Be it buying toys, art supplies, clothes, or musical instruments that all need to be replaced. As a parent of a 2yr old it touches my heart the most to hear my boy playing his "guitar" trying to sing Twinkle Twinkle Little Star.

Along with that my soon to be baby girl will have clothes, a crib, bottles, diapers, and toys again. We had just stock piled all of what we needed just weeks before this happened.

Thanks for your support and helping build a brighter future for my family. It really means a lot that we can even get a second chance with your help, love, and support.



Below is a letter / recap of how my son became my hero that morning as he gave us those precious moments of clean air before esacping.

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I want you to know the story about how you helped save your families life at the age of 2, on March 24th, 2017.

The day before, Thursday (3/23/17), was like any normal day. I went to work, you helped Mom and Minnie clean house. We had a good day, ate good food together, played, read, and went to bed. The next morning started like any other morning you woke up early, as usual, at 4:45am and Mom came out to try and get you back to bed.

Except it wasn't like all the other early mornings.

While she was about to try and get you back to bed, Mom noticed our front door glowing around the edges and heard crackling behind it. She screamed at me to wake up and dial 911. After that she grabbed you and called for our cat Jazzy to our bedroom. Unbeknownst to us she was already hiding under our bed. We secured our bedroom and rushed to grab what clothes we could wear and the belongings we absolutely needed. I had already popped the screen out of our bedroom window, you and Mom were sitting in the window sill waiting for me to grab those few remaining clothes and belongings. As I finished, smoke began pouring into our bedroom through the ceiling AC vent. I took one last breath and crawled to you, trying not to inhale any smoke as we escaped.

We all got outside and then proceeded to watch as our porch was consumed in flames. As the firefighters did their best to save our home. We knew we had our most prized possessions safe, you and your unborn sister (as of this writing).

There was a lot that happened that morning, including neighbors trying to escape, one very fortunate given the circumstances, another badly injured.

We, thankfully, were part of the former fortunate group. Again if it weren't for you waking up when you did it would have been a very different series of events.

During this, you seemed to stay very calm as you were enthralled by all the excitement. Seeing the rush of firefighters, lights, and the roar of the fire. You even called out some of the words you knew, "lights", "fire". We did our best to stay calm for you, as we knew the rest of our possessions would be badly damaged.

I love you and thank you again for helping save us. Even though you didn't know that, that morning you became your family's hero; my hero.

I love you with all my heart,

Dad

P.S.

Here are only a few images from that morning. Please keep in mind, as this is disturbing to be reminded of and viewed, everyone and their pets made it out either safe or being well taken care of by professionals and expected to make a good recovery.

The light on the right is the window we escaped from.