The Register Citizen (Torrington, CT)
‘It’s so heartwarming’
Donations pour in for Bantam small business after fire damages home, garage
BANTAM — Kalia Furnari was sitting in her house, catching up on some work, when she heard a loud explosion behind her.
In a matter of minutes, nearly everything she and her fiance Chris McCormick had invested in their small familyrun business Bantam Tree LLC was going up in flames.
“I heard this big explosion. I didn’t know what it was. It was so loud I instantly started shaking,” Furnari said of the March 1 garage fire that destroyed the majority of the couple’s tree equipment. “It was insane. It took Chris all those years to build it and then 15 or 20 minutes for it to all burn to the ground.”
McCormick started Bantam Tree in 2016 with Furnari coming on a few years later when the two, who have known each other since the third grade, rekindled a high school relationship. Engaged since New Year’s Eve, the Springfield, Mass., natives have since run the business together with just one employee.
For now, though, that’s all on pause. All they have left after the fire that claimed their garage and damaged part of their house is what was in their chip truck, allowing them to take on small jobs, which Furnari said just isn’t enough to support them and McCormick’s two children.
“We can’t do everything. The rest of our equipment is gone,” Furnari said. “Everything else is gone. We had 60 to 80 chains in the garage. We had thousands of tools. It just feels like a big hit. It just is kind of disheartening. You’re standing there watching it burn.”
That disheartening feeling, though, turned toward optimism the day after the fire. Neighbors started a GoFundMe in the hours after the fire to assist the couple in the early stages of recovery. So far, over $25,000 has been raised for the family.
And that’s huge, Furnari said, because they still owed money on some of the damaged equipment, like their mini skid steer, a piece of machinery that can handle up to 3,000 pounds and lets them complete multiple jobs in one day, all while saving the physical toll tree work can have on a body. Furnari said those machines can cost more than $40,000.
“Because we aren’t going to be able to
work this week, or next week even, we have to figure out what we have in the truck. It’s going to help us get by for now,” Furnari said of the donations.
The fundraiser was started by two neighbors, Val and Rick Duffy, and their daughter, Erin Lafond — an act of kindness Furnari said she is very grateful for.
“I’m so thankful for them and love them dearly,” Furnari said of the two. “It’s so touching and I can’t even believe the outpouring we’ve had from the community. It’s my sister’s friends in California and people I’ve never met. It’s so heartwarming and makes you feel hopeful about humanity. It makes you want to cry. It’s so unbelievable.”
There have been other acts of generosity, too, that Furnari said has been helping the family out. She said Kate Graham, the owner of Katalyst Kennels in Litchfield, has let their dog Asher stay while the family deals with their damaged home that Furnari isn’t sure they’re going to be able to live at while clean up and repairs commence. She said her sister, Alyssa Furnari, her mom, family and her fiance’s family have also been by their side.
Furnari also credits the quick work of the Bantam Fire Company and other responding units from Litchfield, Morris, Torrington, East Litchfield, Northfield, Washington and Bethlehem fire companies for containing the fire just 15 minutes after they were dispatched.
“I’m the person who has the hard time accepting money or asking for money,” Furnari said. “It’s so heartwarming. I’m so impressed people are even thinking of us. I know everyone is feeling it money wise really hard. We’re barely making it.”
This isn’t the first hardship Furnari has faced in the last several years. In 2020, her younger sister died, and a few months later she discovered she had a tumor on her heart that had caused her to have a stroke. Surgery to remove the tumor alleviated nerve pain and migraine headaches she had been experiencing for months.
Having that experience and perspective, though, has Furnari at least feeling grateful that no one was hurt in the fire.
“It’s just stuff. We’re alive,” Furnari said. “It’s hard and it feels heavy right now, but we’ll get through it. Everyone helping us makes us feel like we’ll get through it. We feel that. I want to thank everybody from the bottom of our hearts.”