Grimsby man loses prosthetic legs in blaze
GRIMSBY — There were 60 missed calls on his phone that afternoon.
Brad Eggink was in a meeting all day when the fire began. The resident of the upper-floor apartment in downtown Grimsby had no clue what was going on at his home.
“I could see the smoke from the offices in Brantford,” said Eggink, who works as a national classification manager for Holstein Canada.
He says the first person he spoke to was his mom, who told him about the fire.
“My first question was, ‘Are the girls out?’” he said, concerned about his two dogs, Lana and Gracie. Both were taken out of his apartment before the fire spread on July 6. Pictures online looked as though his corner of the building would be spared, but when he arrived, the fire had completely engulfed two downtown buildings.
“It was just a bad day,” said Eggink, who lost all of his belongings; his family keepsakes, mementoes from travelling the world, “everything is gone.”
Eggink has found a new apartment in Dundas and reorganized his life. But he’s run into a hang-up with the insurance company.
The former cattle farmer was in a car accident years ago that left him with an amputated leg. Three of his prosthetic legs were lost in the July fire. The insurance company isn’t covering those legs, which cost around $65,000.
One is a swimming leg, which is made of solid fibreglass and allows him to get in and out of the water safely at a beach.
The second is an athletic leg, for hiking and walking. The third was a spare model of his regular-use prosthetic.
Friend Angela Leslie created a GoFundMe page to and raise money to replace the prosthetics. So far, it has raised more than $680.
“I do a lot of hiking and walking,” said Eggink, who is putting priority on replacing the athletic leg first.