When Your House Goes Up in Flame: Day of the Fire
It’s been a long time leading up to this article. I haven’t shared much about our house fire publicly, but this seems like the best place to do it, if I’m going to. I can’t deal with the nasty comments from trolls on social media, so on the blog this story is going. Plus, it’s the best place to share all my thoughts, not just snippets.
I’m going to share the story of the day of the fire today. I’ll eventually write more, but it’s quite emotional writing about this and the entire story would be way too long for one article, so I’ll cut it up into smaller bits. We also no longer own this property, so I feel safe sharing about it.
So here we go:
Our house was intentionally set on fire at the end of January, 2024. It’s now only a few days from 2026, so we’ve been living this for the last two years. We’ve done a lot of healing in that time and for the most part I’m in an okay mental space about it. There’s no way I could have written about this even one year ago, though, I was still too angry.
Before we get into this, I want to be clear: I’m not going to share exactly what happened or who did this. We do know, but I’m not going to get into that. So if that’s all you’re here for, sorry not sorry, but I’m keeping that part to myself. That doesn’t have to be public knowledge.
I remember clear as day everything that led up to the fire that morning.
Both my husband and I, along with our two cats, were at home in the house when the fire started on the floor above us. Having my house go up in flames is my absolute worst nightmare and had always been a huge fear of mine when living in an apartment, but I never thought it would happen when we lived in a house.
But to have it intentionally happen when you’re literally in the house, only a few feet above your head? That’s a mindfuck I hope you never experience.
When Jacob and I discovered the fire, all I remember is absolute panic, but also being weirdly calm? I called 911, then my parents (they say it was eerie how calm I was, basically saying they needed to come over because the house was on fire), then our tenants (or maybe them first, I can’t remember exactly). It doesn’t matter.
All I cared about was our two cats, who were still in the house, but the dispatcher said we couldn’t go back in. So we sat on the sidewalk across from our house that was going up in flames, eyes staring at the smoke and visible flames, my mind blank except for being scared shitless for my cats. I’m tearing up writing this, just thinking about it. Thankfully, they’re totally fine and are currently sleeping beside me.
Our neighbours tried to talk to us, but I was out of it. I think Jacob talked to some, but I didn’t. The firefighters, police, and ambulance showed up pretty quickly, but it felt like an absolute eternity at the time. I was wearing Berkenstocks and no socks. Jacob’s mom showed up with socks.
The news tried to talk to us at that time, which was insane. Our house was just on fire and they were asking us what we thought about it, how we felt? How the hell do you think we felt? Definitely not happy, sunny thoughts.
Once the fire was out, the police asked Jacob and me questions, separately, and to recount our morning. From the beginning, we had a feeling something was off and before long, we heard whisperings that it was arson.
But I didn’t have the capacity to entirely process that at the time, my cats were still in the house. We kept telling the firefighters and police there were two cats still in the house. Eventually, they found our one cat and brought her out in a cage. I immediately burst into tears and sat with her in the back of our car for what felt like hours, trying to comfort her, but scared shitless that her sister was dead. Fack, I’m crying writing this, the emotions are still right there.
One neighbour wouldn’t leave us alone and kept insisting that we should bring treats down to try to lure her out. We don’t really give our cats treats, so they wouldn’t know what it is, but besides that, our cats are incredibly skittish and there’s no way that would work. I know they had the best intentions saying that, but I just remember it pissing us off. We just wanted to be left alone.
The firefighters and police eventually gave us the all clear to go into the basement (where we lived) to see if we could find our cat and collect anything we needed.
So into the basement the six of us went (my parents, Jacob’s mom, my sister, and Jacob and I) to try to find Chloe. All that was going through my head was finding her dead somewhere from the smoke. We tore apart the place looking for her, taking down the ceiling, looking absolutely everywhere, but couldn’t find her.
I broke down in tears at one point. I couldn’t even process the damage to our things; all I cared about was finding her and I was going through the house in an extremely detached state.
After what felt like another eternity, I eventually found her in the closet behind my husband’s clothes. We’d already looked there, but she clearly hid well. When I found her, she looked so scared, and my heart broke, but I also felt the most intense wave of relief. She darted out and after a few minutes, my dad was able to grab her by the scruff and get her into the cage too. We brought her to the car to reunite with her sister; they were both so scared and it broke my heart.
I don’t remember the details after that too well. I think my sister grabbed us some wraps from Timmy’s, but I couldn’t eat it. Someone offered us hot chocolate (maybe tea?), but I didn’t take that either. I had zero appetite and my stomach was in huge knots of anxiety. There was no way I was eating.
We eventually went back into the basement to grab clothes, some toiletries, and other things. The police would be locking it up soon, so this was our one chance to grab things. We just stuffed things into bags. Mostly clothes, but also electronics and some camping things. Honestly, we weren’t really thinking straight.
The weird thing was, in the basement where we lived, most things looked more or less the same. The fire hadn’t actually damaged our things directly. But the water damage from putting it out, coupled with the terrible stench of the smoke, is why we ended up losing 90% of our things. I’d never even thought about that before. I always thought it was directly from the fire, but nope.
The top floor was locked up tight, and we wouldn’t see the full extent of the damage for a few more weeks.
That was the last time we’d get any actual info or communication from the police. We didn’t get any support from Victim Services, no offer to connect us to any type of support, only fighting with the BC tenancy board, insurance adjustors, and trying to get info on our own house through Freedom of Information. And so began our year+ of intense anger and frustration.
We ended that day setting up our new home in my parents’ house, which is where we’d call home for the next nine months as we all tried to process what the hell had just happened. Welcome to 30.
We started the day reading in bed and ended with our life thrown completely upside down with no home and very few belongings, as it would be for the next two years.
