A GoFundMe campaign started for the McLaughlin family in Port Hardy ended up raising $13,120 after their house on Byng Road caught fire Friday, Dec. 20 roughly around 4 p.m. in the afternoon.
While the inside of the house ended up being destroyed by the smoke and flames, thankfully everyone made it out okay and there were no injuries.
The family posted on the GoFundMe page after closing it down, saying they are "blown away with the support and so thankful, this is going to have a huge impact on how Christmas goes for our family, rebuilding and we want to thank everyone that has reached out with encouragement, support and kind words. Many thanks as well to the Port Hardy fire department and emergency services!"
Port Hardy Fire Rescue chief Brent Borg confirmed the fire was called into them at 4:02 p.m. and they had RCMP and emergency personnel attending the scene along with 21 firefighters, including five members from Port McNeill Fire Rescue.
"We had almost the entire roster show up," said Borg. "Everybody came in and did what they could, we had the full support of the whole department and it was great to see."
RCMP quickly shut down the road and performed traffic control for around an hour and a half due to the fact the nearest fire hydrants were located across the road from the house.
Borg said this call was a really challenging one, "probably one of my top three most challenging fires."
He said the reason for that is while there was a ton of smoke everywhere, there wasn't really a whole lot of flames actually involved.
"The fire kept popping up in different parts of the house and we were just chasing it around. It was so [smokey] in there and the building was compromised, so we had to be really careful with what we were doing."
All told, PHFR was on scene fighting the fire for five hours and then they had to do an extra two hours of cleanup work afterwards.
Borg said when he spoke to his crew later that night after they got back to the fire hall he told them that as devastating as this fire was for the family, he was really proud of how everybody performed.
"We did the best that we could do, there's no doubt about it."
As for how the fire actually started, Borg added it likely originated in the basement but it's currently still under investigation.
