Dereck Boudreau was preparing to sleep in his car on Tuesday night.
The 71-year-old was evacuated after a fire broke out inside his apartment building in Middle Sackville, N.S., in the early hours of Monday morning — and was struggling to find a place for he and his wife to stay as most hotels in the area were at capacity.
“I lost everything. Everything is in there … it’s unbelievable what we lost,” Boudreau said outside a comfort centre located up the road from where he was living.
That was until Sue Hill, who was donating items to evacuated residents, overheard Boudreau’s challenges and offered him her family trailer at a nearby campground until he finds a new place to live.
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“They told me there was one couple that needed housing, I asked if there was anything else they needed so, like I said, we thought of my house but the steps aren’t going to work so, the trailer will,” Hill said, noting the trailer is better equipped to support the couple’s mobility challenges.
Boudreau said this came as “very good news” to he and his wife, adding it’s one less thing to worry about as he works out his insurance claim.
“I’m very pleased with what you’re doing, you and your husband, I thank you, thank you very much the both of you from the bottom of my heart,” Boudreau told Hill.
An evacuation order was put into place after a fire broke out at an apartment unit on Hanwell Drive on Monday. More than 180 people had to evacuate at the time.
Drew MacCulloch, district chief for Halifax Regional Fire and Emergency, said on Tuesday that an investigation into how the fire started will begin once the blaze is deemed under control.
“We still have a little bit of a smouldering situation going on in a portion of the building, and we’re waiting on some extra equipment to come to deal with that,” he told Global News.
“Where we can get the excavator in, we’ll be able to extinguish the one little area of concern we have now and at that point we’ll declare the fire out.”
MacCulloch said the building owner will have the final say whether people can continue living in any of the units that are deemed safe to return.
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