Walter Piwowarski lost his home in the flood and says he wouldn’t know what to do if he hadn’t received help from the the Christian Aid Ministers of Waterloo.
Last week’s flooding impacted hundreds houses in the East End. Many families lost precious and irreplaceable possessions from photos to furniture. Piwowarski and his wife took up temporary residency at a basement apart on Southern Avenue with the plans to buy a house not too far away.
The flood changed those plans drastically.
He said he’s unable to move into the house now as it was severely flooded and can’t stay in the apartment so he has to find somewhere else to live. He was able to save some of his possessions but a large portion had to be thrown out.
The 61-year-old said he wouldn’t be able to move all his stuff out of the apartment in time but then he heard about the Christian Aid Ministers and decided to call them for help.
“Everything happened so fast it was unbelievable,” Piwowarski said holding back tears. “This organization came and they have been a blessing to us. We could never have cleaned this house out. We have to be out of here in 30 days. If it wasn’t for these guys who came out of town I don’t know what we would have done.”
The organization had six volunteers from southern Ontario and from the Fort Frances – Rainy River area come up to Thunder Bay to help give some relief to residents impacted by the flood.
The group’s spokesman Nelson Nighswander said it was the first disaster that his group ever responded to. Christians Aid only started about a year ago and the Northern Ontario chapter has only been up and running for the past couple of months.
They strive to be one of the first on a scene because Nighswander said there’s a demand that they can fill.
“We try to specialize in being one of the first ones available after a disaster,” Nighswander said. “We’re still pretty new and we initially provide some of the manual labour. There are other agencies that help rebuild and so on but this is a niche that we can fill.”
Even after spending three days in the city, Nighswander said there’s still plenty of houses left that need looking after. He said the city gave them some individual addressed and they went there to do what they could to help. Usually the residents didn’t have insurance.
