WOES JUST BEGIN ONCE FIRE PUT OUT

by James Keller

Sandy Mowat flips through a photo album containing pictures of what used to be her home.

The pictures show the inside of her old apartment, a blackened, unrecognizable mess covered in ash, as her dog explores the wreckage.

The 2 1/2-storey building she was living in on Portland Street burnt down a year ago Dec. 5. Someone using a torch to thaw out a frozen oil line set fire to an adjacent wall. The building was so badly damaged, it had to be torn down.

The only things she has left are a white bookshelf, still marked with burns, and a plastic Chubby Soda bottle, half empty and warped from the fire, which she keeps as a reminder of what happened.

But she doesn't need a reminder. She she thinks about it every day.

"It's something I'll never forget, I'll tell you that much," Ms. Mowat said Thursday, just days before the one-year anniversary of the destruction of her home. "I'm still rebuilding."

She wasn't home when the fire started. She and a friend were gone to a pub down the street. When she returned, the building was already ablaze.

Marty Dobbin, deputy fire marshal for Halifax, said these types of fires are all too common.

"When we have a cold snap, pipes are going to freeze from time to time and people are going to use torches," he said. "Just about every winter we're going to hear about a case where someone uses it and we have a fire."

Mr. Dobbin said he hears about someone in the province completely losing their home in a fire about once a month.

"They still face the shock of the fire and the tragedy of the fire and losing their possessions," he said. "The impact of a fire on anyone is just devastating."

Mr. Dobbin said this can be even worse if the homeowner or tenant doesn't have insurance - tenants like Ms. Mowat.

She didn't have insurance - she said she couldn't afford it - so she had no money to replace her belongings. The night of the fire, she stayed with a friend, and she spent the following two nights in a hotel paid for by the Red Cross.

Joanne Lawlor with Canadian Red Cross disaster services said the organization stepped in to help with 75 similar fires in Nova Scotia last year.

The fire department calls the Red Cross, which steps in if victims don't have a place to go, either because they are uninsured or because they don't have friends or family that can take them in.

"Depending on the nature of the disaster or emergency, anyone can be vulnerable," said Ms. Lawlor, adding that the Red Cross is usually only involved for the first 72 hours.

"We have a limited amount of money, so we can't just open the purse," she said. "We are instrumental in getting people thinking about how to help themselves."

Three days after the fire destroyed her apartment, Ms. Mowat was back on the street. With nowhere to go, she returned to what was left of her home to see the damage for the first time.

"The first thing I noticed was the smell," she said. "It's a very distinct smell, it gets all through your clothes. Then I saw my pictures still on the walls, and my heart just sank."

Now she's living in a new building, further from downtown Dartmouth on Portland Street, but she's still picking up the pieces.

Ms. Mowat receives a disability pension because of depression and anxiety, so the costs involved in starting over were hard to manage.

Almost everything in her apartment was donated from people in her community. She paid for things like her damage deposit and utility installation fees with money from a relief fund collected by Scotia Bank.

"I'm still paying off bills," she said. "If it wasn't for people donating furniture or money to the fund, I don't know what I would have done."

As she continues to rebuild, she said stories like hers are quickly forgotten about. She wants people to realize that once the fire is put out, the real problems are just beginning.

"When the fire trucks leave, when it's no longer in the paper, people forget about it," she said.

"Before, I'd see a fire and just think, 'Oh, that's a shame' - you just don't realize what it's like."