An Alberta man who lost his home in last year’s wildfire in Fort McMurray has had another stroke of incredibly bad luck, losing a second house this summer to raging forest fires in British Columbia.
“Not that there's ever a good time to have a fire, but this is most definitely the worst time,” Jason Schurman told CTV Edmonton. “It’s a bit much and my wife was literally (saying), ‘This is just like last year -- this is getting ridiculous.’”
Today, Schurman’s Fort McMurray home is little more than a charred foundation.
“Baby pictures, everything,” Schurman said of their loss. “A lot of our family was in that house. Everything was in that house.”
More than a year later, Schurman, like many others, isn’t done with insurance claims. While he still works in Fort McMurray, he’s now moved his family to Edmonton.
“It was starting to get better in terms of normalcy,” he said.
Then, the unthinkable happened -- another wildfire in another province caused another home he owns to burn to the ground.
“I can tell you it was an instant amount of stress, just ‘cause I know from experience what I just finished going through... And I'm not even finished,” he said.
Schurman bought the now-scorched house, which was located west of Williams Lake, as a bachelor, keeping it as a rental property when he moved to Alberta to start a family.
The family is now being forced to pay mortgages on two empty lots as well as their new Edmonton home, their savings and credit stretched to the limit. Eventually, insurance settlements will come through, but Schurman expects to take a loss on both properties.
Meanwhile, life goes on for the family, although things have been far from easy.
“When it's raining, nobody’s got rain jackets,” he said. “When it was cold, nobody had winter jackets. So yeah, you're constantly searching for stuff and buying stuff. “
With a report from CTV Edmonton’s Jeremy Thompson
