Family hopes to rebuild after off-grid home destroyed by fire (5 photos)

A family who had been living in an off-the-grid cabin just north of Echo Bay is now wondering how to start all over again following a fire that reduced their home to rubble.

“It’s down to the ground, it’s burned, it’s ashes,” said Echo Lake resident Tammy Evans.

Evans, who had originally moved to the unorganized township from Lindsay, Ont., with her husband and two of their children back in July of last year, says that the blaze left the family with little more than the clothes on their backs.

Just after 5 p.m. on Feb. 28, Evans and her two children were on their way back home when her 14-year-old daughter Amelia noticed that something wasn’t right.

“Coming out the top, it seemed, there was like smoke on either side of the roof,” Evans said.

“I looked at the big kitchen windows and there’s smoke inside, like dark grey.”

Amelia then went into the home to rescue Bullet, the family dog.

Evans - knowing there were two 400 lb. propane tanks just outside their cabin - ran to turn them off. Her children were inside when the smoke turned into flames.

“At that point, flames started coming out the top of the cabin, and I’m like, ‘get out, get away!’” Evans said. “In 15 minutes it was like fully, fully ablaze.”

In an unorganized township, there’s no fire department available in order to extinguish the fire. Evans says that a member of the Ontario Provincial Police did attend the scene, but all the officer could do was watch the off-the-grid structure slowly burn to the ground over the course of three hours while the family traveled to Sault Ste. Marie in order to grab some supplies.

The family is now living in a two-bedroom apartment that sits atop their neighbour’s garage. Evans says that her neighbours in the Echo Lake area have stepped forward to help her family out.

“We all basically had the clothes we were wearing,” said Evans. “So the community brought bags and bags and bags of clothing, it was like Value Village in our living room.”

“They really have a sense of community out here, it’s unbelievable.”

When the Evans family first considered relocating from southern Ontario to Echo Lake they were well aware of the fact that there was no fire department obligated to help them in the event of a fire, but after her husband - who works security for a mine up north in Dubreuilville - found a listing for the tiny, two-storey cabin online, they knew where they wanted to live.

“It was like this little log cabin on like, 440 acres and that was it,” Evans said. “It had never been lived in, just built.”

It hasn’t been an easy transition to Echo Lake for the Evans family.

Shortly before their house burnt to the ground, the family celebrated a late Christmas due to a number of health issues that Evans’ 11 year-old son Elijah was going through during the holiday season.

Elijah was initially flown to hospital in London at the beginning of December due to a staph infection. While he was there, staff at the hospital discovered an aneurysm on his aorta and a heart defect. He was then transferred to Sick Kids Hospital in Toronto before coming back home to Echo Lake in February.

Now the family has no other choice than to start over from scratch following the fire. They have roughly $125,000 from insurance, but the family had no content insurance to cover what they had lost inside the home.

“We took over the previous policy, and I don’t think we really looked that closely, unfortunately,” said Evans.

Neighbours and others in the area have offered to help the family rebuild, in order to save them the labour costs. Evans says that despite all that’s happened to the family during its relatively short time living in the Algoma District, she still very much wants to rebuild in Echo Lake.

“I sure hope so, I’m hoping,” said Evans, on the verge of crying. “We love it here, we want to stay and you know, we kind of need a home.”

The family has posted a link to its GoFundMe page on its blog, which documents their move to an off-the-grid home in an unorganized township, and everything that’s transpired since.