At 35 weeks pregnant, one local woman never dreamed she would spend the final month of her pregnancy looking for a new place to live, let alone buying new furniture and essentials.
Kristen and Nathan Sundevic had already been through more than most people when the adjoining suite of their duplex caught fire Tuesday afternoon. Last year, 29-year-old Kristen was diagnosed with cervical cancer. She underwent surgery and completed treatment until she was deemed in remission. Before the diagnosis, she and her husband had been trying to have a baby. For five years, the couple endured endless doctor appointments in hopes of one day having a child of their very own. About eight months ago, their dream finally came true when Kristen found out she was pregnant with a baby boy.
In August, the couple moved from Vancouver to the upper suite of a four-unit duplex on Halifax Street. It was a larger place than they had been in before, perfect for a new family, Kristen told the NOW.
But on Nov. 24, their dreams went up in smoke.
“I’m really pregnant, so usually I am sleeping on Tuesday afternoons when I get home from prenatal class, but I was feeling really guilty that I don’t have our bag packed to go to the hospital yet. So I was working on that, and I was really hot, so I had my patio door open to the bedroom, and I heard a lady shouting, ‘Are you OK? Do you need help?’” Kristen recalled.
When she went outside to see what was going on, she saw smoke coming from the suite next door. Kristen ran back inside to grab a fire extinguisher, but by the time she made it back outside, the windows had shattered and flames were shooting from her neighbour’s suite.
Kristen watched in horror as her neighbour, already covered in burns, grabbed a garden hose and went back inside to fight the fire.
“I assumed that he’d die, so I just ran in to get my cat and dog,” she said.
Kristen threw the pets in her car and moved it out of the driveway so it wouldn’t get burned by the growing inferno. She called 911 and watched as her neighbours’ suites were engulfed by the flames.
Thirty-two firefighters, eight fire trucks, two rescue trucks and one command vehicle were sent to battle the two-alarm blaze, assistant fire Chief David Graystone told the NOW on Wednesday.
When firefighters arrived, they managed to rescue Kristen’s neighbour from the fire. He was rushed to hospital.
“The fire was coming out of the windows when we arrived, so what we did was we attacked it from the outside at first, and then knocked it down,” he said.
All the tenants escaped the blaze, along with two cats, one dog and the Sundevic’s more than 20 reptiles.
Two other cats, believed to be living in the suites gutted by the fire, were not as lucky. One cat was found barely alive by firefighters when they first entered the duplex, Graystone said.
“We tried to resuscitate it, but it was too badly injured,” he said, adding that all Burnaby fire trucks are equipped with oxygen masks specifically designed for animals.
A fourth cat is still missing.
Fire investigators, meanwhile, will be combing through the home over the next few days to try and determine what caused the blaze. It appears the fire started in the downstairs suite of the eastern half of the duplex, however Graystone said he couldn’t confirm this until after investigators completed their report.
While the flames didn’t cross over into the Sundevic’s suite, all their possessions have been contaminated by smoke and asbestos. Kristen’s husband was allowed to return to their home on Wednesday to look for two missing bearded dragons, which he found, and he told her everything was covered in a heavy layer of black soot.
“He said everything is pretty much covered in black stuff, and we can’t have anything until they see if maybe some things are OK, or we have to hire some kind of disaster crew to just get rid of everything,” Kristen said.
With five weeks to go before Kristen’s due date, her cousin April Michelson has started an online fundraising campaign to try and collect donations to help the couple restock.
Despite the hardships the couple has faced over the past few years, Kristen is trying to stay positive as she and her husband await the birth of their first child.
“It could be a lot worse,” she said. “In the grand scheme of things, long term, we’re doing really well this year. … This’ll just be a big bump in the road, but we’ll get by.”
To donate to the Sundevics’ crowdfunding campaign, visit www.youcaring.com and search ‘Helping Kristen, Nathan, and Baby Sundevic.’
