ESTEVAN — The house that Jodi Neufeld and her four kids resided in was significantly damaged on Sept. 24 due to a fire that started in a neighbouring building and spread over to their place.
Two months later, Neufeld says the level of stress is down a bit, but it's still really hard for her family. While nobody was injured physically, they all are living with trauma now, and she believes a campfire smell will remain an unpleasant trigger for her for a while.
As the family was dealing with the aftermath of the fire – moving into a different house and replacing almost everything they had and lost in the fire – the Elks of Canada heard about their tragedy and found a way to support the Estevan family.
"We have a fund called Elks and Royal Purple Fund for Children," said Darren Stephen, past president of the Saskatchewan Elks Association. "We financially help children from zero to 18 who lost a home due to fire … and we give $500 per child to a maximum of $1,500."
Three of Jodi Neufeld's children are under the age of 18, so the Elks of Canada presented her with a cheque for $1,500 to help offset any kind of costs they faced because of the emergency.
"[This money] is to assist Jodi Neufeld and her family in their time of need, and to support [her three children] as they work through the devastating loss that they have suffered through the loss of their home due to the fire," said Stephen, forwarding the words of the Kevan McBeth, national director of the Elks of Canada.
Stephen also noted that in case of an emergency like the one the Neufelds faced, to get support from the Elks all a family would have to do is reach out to a member of a local lodge and answer a couple of simple questions. And a local lodge member would apply for national funding on behalf of the family.
Neufeld said she was grateful for the support from the Elks and also from many other people that were reaching out throughout these two months or just dropping some necessities in her car. That support helped a lot, yet it is still very stressful and tough for her and the family.
"We found a house on Isabelle Street. It's crowded, but everybody has a bedroom. We have a roof. So that part is good," Neufeld shared. "But I feel that we are still kind of scrambling. We got some stuff out of the other house, but we're still not settled."
She noted that she is currently in process of getting a degree to upgrade from an licensed practical nurse to a registered nurse while also working. Children are going to school, and things are starting to get better, but a lot of parts are still missing, and they haven't recovered yet.
"We have a lot of support from the school, which has been amazing. And people have reached out all over the place, which has helped immensely with a lot of the things," Neufeld shared. "But I just feel like our stress level is still really high. Not so high. But we haven't gotten there yet."
The house the Neufelds were living in was rented and Jodi said one big thing she learned from their tragedy was that they should have had rental insurance.
"We just didn't get it. A big mistake. I highly recommend anyone renting to get rental insurance. Because yeah, we just didn't think anything was going to happen," Neufeld said. "And [the fire emergency] just felt so out of our control. Because it was the house next to us that caught fire originally, and we don't burn candles, we don't have frayed cords, we're very careful about those kinds of things. But there's literally nothing that we could have done on our end to stop what happened from happening."
Two GoFundMe campaigns were started to help the family, which jointly raised $1,800 of the $30,000 goals. The campaigns are still open and can be found at gofundme.com. And while they haven't generated too much activity, Neufeld said a lot of people contacted her personally and helped her by donating.
"People were and still are very, very generous," Neufeld said. "Despite the fact that it all went so fast, and things changed so quickly, I feel very, very blessed that we had so much support coming from people."
Over the past two months, with the support from the community, one way or the other they replaced most of the necessities, but if someone wants and has an opportunity to help, Neufeld said feeding a big family she could use a freezer and a fridge.
For details and contacts, people can reach out to the Mercury at abykhovskaia@estevanmercury.ca.
