Fire leaves mom and daughter homeless
Pet killed in blaze; Christmas presents, belongings damaged
A single mom is homeless days before Christmas and a seven-yearold girl lost her beloved pet in a fire that caused roughly $50,000 damage to an east end apartment.
Jessica Hyde has no insurance to cover all that was destroyed in the suspected electrical fire Friday at 1430 King St. E.
But she says her family’s biggest loss was irreplaceable anyway, as Garfield, her daughter Brooklynn Muldoon’s big orange cat, died in the blaze.
“It’s her best friend,” Hyde said. “To her, it was like a human.”
The cat would push all the items out of the cubbies at the head of Brooklynn’s bed each night so he could sleep with her.
“They would have meow conversations,” said Kathleen Thibodeau, the mom of Hyde’s boyfriend, Robert Thibodeau.
Hyde, 26, was bringing Brooklynn home from her Grade 2 class at Memorial City Elementary School when the fire broke out around 3:15 p.m. in their unit at a walk-up apartment building at King Street East and Ottawa Street South.
Family and friends say it started in the kitchen where the fuse panel is located.
Garfield was the only one home and the fire was contained to their apartment.
There were no other injuries.
“It’s three days before Christmas,” said Thibodeau, who rushed there after her stepdaughter living nearby called in a panic to say she could see a fire in Hyde’s apartment.
“All her Christmas presents are up there,” Thibodeau said. “Coats, clothes and shoes.” Family and friends gathered at the apartment after the fire was out to try to salvage what they could.
Presents wrapped in paper featuring Brooklynn’s favourite character, SpongeBob SquarePants, were being carried out covered in soot.
Her bed even had a specially made mattress featuring the cartoon character.
“Everything was black,” said Brooklynn’s aunt Courtney Hyde. “The living room, which was not even where the fire was, is covered in soot.
“There is black running down the walls.”
The Canadian Red Cross has been called to assist the mom.
Other residents were able to return to their apartments.
“I’m going to check my fuse panel,” Gary Read said.
Read, a friend of the Hyde family, took the cat to a nearby vet after the fire.
“He was an awesome cat,” he said.