Mother’s Day fire adds anxiety for evicted campers
One homeless man lost everything in blaze that swept through his shelter
A Mother’s Day fire has added extra stress for homeless residents of an encampment who will be kicked out by Cambridge bylaw officers in a couple of weeks.
The campers are living on private property owned by TC Energy and were in the process of sorting out their belongings and trying to figure out where they should go.
As the fire neared the encampment last weekend, one of the residents who has lived there longest said he asked a firefighter if his shelter would be saved. He said the firefighter looked at his cabin and responded with a growl of disgust.
“It’s pretty bad when someone almost barks at you rather than answer the question, and that kind of makes you feel like, lower than the rest of society,” he said.
The man and his partner aren’t being identified because he is sick with cancer and many in his family don’t know.
The timing of the fire couldn’t be worse.
The half-dozen people at the camp in an industrial area of Cambridge near Hespeler Road are preparing to move after city bylaw officers told them they had to go.
None have secured housing. The city says the owner of the private property, TC Energy, wanted residents evicted. TC Energy has said it considers the camp to be trespassing, and says it’s concerned about the safety of residents.
“Please contact local municipal bylaw authorities for questions about any action being taken to clear the site,” the company said in an email.
It cited the fire as proof it’s unsafe for people to live there. Residents say they had no problems when there was a fire at the site more than a year ago. Cambridge Mayor Kathryn McGarry said evicting people experiencing homelessness won’t solve the problem.
“I don’t believe we can solve this from municipal bylaw just moving people along to set up somewhere else,” McGarry said. “We need to get to the root cause of these issues.”
McGarry said building more affordable housing is key.
At least three from the camp plan to make new shelters elsewhere. One resident said fire safety isn’t always top of mind when people are worried about feeding themselves, getting access to drinking water and protecting themselves from others.”
According to residents, the fire started in one man’s shelter and then spread quickly through a treed, grassy area because of the wind. Firefighters were able to put out the blaze.
The other shelters at the camp were spared and nobody was injured, but the man whose shelter burned has lost everything.
Waterloo Regional Police have been to the site at least twice since the incident, but in an email, police spokespersons said they had no updates.
Some of the campers blame the hot weather and dry grass for the fire, saying they heard a couple of pops or bangs and then saw smoke.
Residents of a different encampment on Victoria Street in Kitchener have received fire extinguishers and carbon monoxide detectors from the fire department, the city confirmed, but nothing like that has been extended to this group by Cambridge Fire.