B.C. family to rebuild after losing home to fire twice in 4 years

As more B.C. wildfire evacuees get into burned-out neighbourhoods to see the damage first-hand, many are finding nothing but foundations covered in ash.

It’s a nightmare Patrick Lacey and his family have now lived through not once, but twice. Losing their homes to fires – most recently to the McDougall Creek wildfire that swept through West Kelowna.

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“It’s definitely a lot to absorb. It feels like – it doesn’t feel real. It feels like it’s just the same fire we had three years ago but it just is going to go on indefinitely now,” he said.

“I just cried. I mean, it’s a total loss. I never expected to be starting over again.”

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In 2019, an electrical fire destroyed Lacey’s home. Shortly after in 2020, his partner Caroline was diagnosed with breast cancer and underwent a double mastectomy and is now in remission.

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Despite the hardships, Lacey decided to start over on the same property as the owner and builder himself. But this time, he couldn’t get insurance coverage.

“We were able to for the first months because there was a three-month course of construction, they offered us. Beyond the three months, we were on our own basically. We tried everywhere, but because I couldn’t wrap the house up in three months, because I don’t have a team of guys, it’s just me, they were like ‘no we can’t extend you, we’ve given you three months’,” he explained.

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A GoFundMe page created for his family has now reached over $23,000 but it’s still a financial disaster for him.

“We don’t even really know. We’re looking at the end of our investments, what we have left, I invested most of what I had from my savings for retirement into the last build,” Lacey said.

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He’s now using his story as a cautionary tale to others.

“Have your money for every step of the game before you start the build a hundred per cent. We probably could’ve finished earlier if we hadn’t spent so much time trying to fireproof our property. That’s one that’s probably going to haunt me forever,” he said, adding that he plans to rebuild for a third time.

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