This is our story: We have owned Gun lake since 1971 when my dad Alan Leigh purchased the property. He had 2 small trailers on the property a tool shed, a deck and an outhouse which he called Gods Country. There are 5 children Vicki Gary Marty Rick and Dan who have used it over the years. Some of us brought our children to Gun lake as kids which made my dad happy that the next generation was now using his lake property. When he passed in 2017 the children were given the property. We rebuild a Gorgeous deck, repainted his 50 year old shed ( with his good junk in it) bought a larger new trailer with a large roof over the trailer. We upgraded to solar panels using battery power and a generator for all our needs. Each year we would add more touches to make the property beautiful. The last thing we were going to replace last summer was the 50 year old outhouse. In the last 5 years two of our brothers Marty and Gary have passed and now have their ashes at gun lake along with our Mom and Dad. There are 3 of us left now Vicki, Rick and Dan.
When the alert came out last August Dan and Vicki were there and we decided to leave never thinking that the fire would get to our property. We closed up everything never thinking that would be the last time we would see what we had worked on and built up since our Dad had passed.
The week before Aug 18 th: We know the fire is close but kept praying it would stay away from our neighbours and our property.
August 18 th: The fire sweeps through with a tornado fire wall and destroys our property and our neighbours’ properties. We don’t know for sure for another week until we receive a report and pictures of our property that everything is destroyed.
We are devasated and underinsured, in our 60 s and close to 70. We can never replace what we had there and have hope that through donations we can get help with clean up. We lost about $70000 in structures and could only insure the trailer and contents. We did receive a cheque from insurance for $26500.
Clean up so far has cost us $800 for danger tree removal, the logger took all the 18 trees to the mill and kept the money for the trees. We are left with all the branches to clean up and it is a mess. We are left with burnt metal trailer debris ( no idea yet what that will be to get transported out). We are on the list at Cascades to do an environmental assessment which we have secured $2000 in funding for. Along with this assessment is the cost of the survey $1700 which we will have to pay. We have a line on a motorhome which we will look at in the spring for $15000.
We need help for clean up so we can try to start again as at this point we do not know the costs associated with the clean up process. We appreciate the group Debbie Demare is working with to try to secure funding but understand this process has been difficult. I will include before and after pictures of our Gods country Gun lake property.
Vicki Marlatt ( for Rick and Dan Leigh and Kristin Leigh the other owners)
