Friends lovingly recall victim of northeast fire
An early morning phone call sent Yves Gaudet into a panic.
Around 5 a.m. on Saturday, Gaudet was told that the house belonging to his parents Ivan Gaudet and Diane Morais was on fire. His family was in the hospital, and his best friend Justin Long was missing.
“It wasn’t real, I thought it was a dream,” Gaudet said. “But once I stopped my sense there, we called the emergency and asked if it was OK to come by.”
Yves said Ivan, Diane, sister Karine and her boyfriend Justin Long were all at the family home at 130 Coverton Heights N.E. when the fire started. Long did not live at the home, but had driven down from Cold Lake to visit Karine for her birthday on Nov. 5, the morning of the fire.
Ivan suffered severe burns to 30 per cent of his body while Diane and Karine made it out of the house with minor injuries. But hours after the fire, Long was still unaccounted for. After a search, acting battalion chief Randy McRae said firefighters located and removed the body of a man from the home, who friends have identified as 29-year-old Justin Long.
Yves said he met Long when they were classmates at SAIT. The two men were co-workers in the aviation industry and Yves introduced Long to his sister, Karine, who he dated for nearly two years.
“He was my best friend, and that’s how he met my sister and they hit it off,” an emotional Yves said. “He was going to be the best man at my wedding.”
Anthony Dowhan also went to school with Long at SAIT and said he was in disbelief when he heard about the death of his friend.
“I found out last night just in my (Facebook) news feed through a close friend,” Dowhan said. “I wrote to him thinking it was some horrible joke. He never wrote me back.”
Friends of the Gaudet family have been doing what they can to help the family, and neighbour Jade Briggs started a GoFundMe page that has already raised over $10,000 in donations. Yves said his family plans to share the funds raised with the Long family to help them through their loss.
“It’s tremendous support,” Yves said. “We do kind of feel guilty a bit, because we’re getting all this support and we only lost our home when the Long family lost their son and their brother ... a lot of that I think is going to be helping the Long family.”
Carol Henke with the Calgary Fire Department said investigators are still on scene and the cause of the fire is not known.
Yves said Ivan is in a medically induced coma and has been in surgery every day since the fire. While his condition is stable, Yves said his father’s recovery will be long.
Neighbours describe Ivan as a fixture in the neighbourhood, always working on projects in his garage and taking time to talk with passersby.
“I’ve seen him and he looks pretty good, face-wise, but his lower body is pretty badly damaged,” Yves said. “I hope this doesn’t change him.”