ABBOTSFORD (NEWS1130) – They’ve been out of their home for over a month, but an elderly Abbotsford couple can now return after local crews rebuilt it following a massive fire last month.
When the blaze happened at the place on Downes Road, firefighters and officers promised the two, who didn’t have insurance, that they would get to spend Christmas at home.
The house has been in the family for 86 years.
It took crews, along with the help of about 200 volunteers and lots of donated building supplies, roughly four weeks to rebuild the home.
“It’s been really humbling, especially the community support… from people delivering coffee every morning to people donating tens of thousands of dollars worth of products,” says firefighter Craig Bird.
He notes that luckily, there wan’t too much structural damage to the home, “but the smoke damage and water damage was significant.”
“So, we had to strip the whole house right back to studs and it’s rebuilt up to code and with some new, modern conveniences,” he adds.
The fire had started in the chimney. The Connors will get to move back in tomorrow.
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So, if I understand it, this is how things panned out: A couple CHOOSE (based on comments made by the couple’s son in media interviews several weeks ago) to not make necessary repairs to their home (repairs they could easily fund through leveraging the equity in their home) and the insurance company declines to insure based on safety concerns related to the required repairs.
The house burns down because (golly gee willikers) what is apparently the very concern the insurance company had with the house turns out to have been a real and present danger.
The couple that CHOSE to NOT ACT on safety concerns now gets rewarded for their choice with a wonderful new home, a massive increase in equity and if ever they choose to sell the property, they make a substantial profit. All at the expense and on the backs of those people who contributed their time and money.
Not a bad deal. Where can I sign up for this program?
I’m all for communities aiding those in need, but this couple have made potentially tens of thousands of dollars of profit, after they made an intentional decision to not take necessary steps to prevent the very issue that caused their loss.
That’s like a snowboarder who goes out of bounds and then gets rescued after two days, selling his story to a magazine.
Something’s wrong here….
Are you kidding me? Get a life Grinch!
Yes there was issues and yes, that’s the problem that started the fire but you can’t get blood frome a stone. They may have ahd equity in their home but no bank is going to lend out money if you can’t pay it back nor will they lend money if something is wrong with the house.
In the end, this was all donated and completed by volunteers and if they didn’t want to do it, they wouldn’t have and this couple would be homeless. But thankfully some people still have a heart and want to help those in need and they didn’t ask those who didn’t want to pay for it to pay for it.
Unfortunately what they didn’t remind everyone in the story was they couldn’t afford to get insurance because of some damage to the house that needed to get fixed before they could be insured. The repairs would have cost them approx. $15k and they couldn’t afford it.
What a wonderful story-so nice to see the volunteer spirit. I have cancelled my home insurance too. It was rather expensive and I now know the community will jump in if I have any problems. Thanks!
How wonderful.
We need more about the helping hands in our communities …. wonderful to see this article
Nice! Way to go, volunteers!!!
Great story! I really hope that people do learn from this and purchase home insurance, it is not extremely expensive and obviously this type of community assistance will not necessarily be available in all cases. Nevertheless, great news for this family at Christmas time!
So great to hear that the community helped out this elderly couple. Thank you to News 1130 for keeping us updated on this story. I remember seeing this story on the news and felt so sorry for them. I’d never heard of anyone living in the same place for 80+ years. Most of the news we hear is bad news, so I’m so happy to hear a good outcome.
beautiful story. a good uplifting read to start the day.
So great to hear when a community comes together and does such a wonderful thing for this elderly couple. Most of the latest news is one bad thing after the other, so thank you to News 1130 for keeping us updated on this story.