SLEMON PARK – It was a Valentine’s Day Deanne Ramsay won’t forget.
She was cooking lunch for her children – tortilla bowls – and was heating up oil in a pot on the stove.
“I have about two inches of oil in the pot, to heat it up, when all of a sudden it caught fire,” explained the stay-at-home mother of five.
She grabbed her phone, called 911, reported the fire and location, and hung up.
“I didn’t have time for anything else.”
Immediately, Ramsay’s attention went to getting her children out of the house safe.
“I grabbed my youngest sons, their coats and boots and shoved them out to the backyard. Then I went back into the house to get my six-month-old daughter out. I bundled her in my jacket and took her to our neighbours.”
When Ramsay went to go back into the house through the front door, black smoke came billowing out.
“If I had gone back in, I wouldn’t have made it.”
At this point, Ramsay’s three and four year old sons were still in the fenced-in backyard.
“I tried to jump the fence. But it’s about five, six feet tall so I couldn’t make it over. I knocked over one of the garbage cans to try to climb on that, but that didn’t work,” she said, voice soft.
Within moments, a police officer drove by. He was able to get over the fence and get Ramsay’s son out of the backyard.
Ramsay’s fiancé, Dan Harding, was at work at the time of the fire. The family’s dog was able to make it out of the house but their cat died.
She says she is thankful her other two children were at school at the time.
“If they had been home, they probably would have been playing in their room upstairs. We wouldn’t have been able to get to them.”
Everything was lost, said Ramsay.
“We don’t have insurance. It was an oversight when Dan switched jobs and we didn’t make sure we had house insurance. We did before. We lost everything. Christmas toys, memories, photographs, everything.”
Ramsay says the fire was an honest mistake and hopes people can learn from this incident.
“Make sure you always have a fire extinguisher and be extremely careful when cooking with oil.”
Ramsay, Harding, the kids and the dog have been relocated to a fully furnished home in Slemon Park. They will be able to stay there until the end of the month and then they have the option to move into an unfurnished duplex also in the park.
Slemon Park property management teams have taken items that may be salvaged to a cold storage facility to air them out. From there they will arrange a crew to wipe them down and see if they can be saved.
“Where do we go from here? I don’t know. We’ve been thanking God that we’re alive and that our children are alive.”
A gofundme page has been started to help the family with expenses. Disaster volunteers with the Canadian Red Cross have also assisted with emergency purchases like clothing, food, infant-care items, comfort toys for the children, and other support.
Donations of items like groceries, toys, clothing and other goods are being collected in one of the Community Rooms in the Slemon Park Plaza.
Monetary donations and gift cards are being accepted at the Slemon Park Corporation main office.
How can you help?
–Child clothes sizes, 10–12, 3–5, and 3–6 months old
–Toys, such as Lego
–Monetary and gift card donations
–Other clothing items
–Donate to the gofundme page: https://www.gofundme.com/55fo7ug
