The generosity community members showed one another and utility workers following the devastating ice storm that swept through Ontario in the spring was not the extent of natural disasters beginning out the best in people this year.
Just as people across Kawartha Lakes and beyond showed up for one another then, Burnt River artist Christina Handley used her Facebook connections to raise hundreds of dollars to purchase and deliver snacks and drinks to the firefighters who tirelessly fought a wildland fire burning east of Burnt River and south of Kinmount in August.
“There’s good people in the world,” says Handley. “It’s such a nice feeling to know that there are good people still in the world when you hear all the bad stuff.”
Residing on a cattle farm in Burnt River, Handley learned the power of her Facebook connections when she first launched her business, Handley Acres Metal Creations. A former photographer, Handley decided to buy a plasma cutter “just for fun” in 2016 because of her love of metal.
After teaching herself to use it, she began posting some of her pieces — which are done entirely freehand and often created with scrap metal — to Facebook and quickly garnered an online audience.
“It really just snowballed organically,” she says. “Facebook has really been the best tool for me. I have a really great following, the people are fantastic, and I keep posting stuff when I make it, and it sells. I’m truly blessed, and I know it.”
This escalated even more throughout the pandemic when people spent so much time shopping online.
If Handley posted something, it would sell within minutes, and she even had to begin announcing ahead of time when she would post items for sale because followers would often miss out due to how quickly things would sell after she posted them.
“I’d watch the clock on my computer and as soon as it hit eight, I would post, and I would have 16 or 20 items sell out in minutes,” she says. “They are an amazing group of people.”
That statement was further proven last month when a wildland fire named HAL019 by the Ministry of Natural Resources (MNR) burned from August 9 to 20 across 27 hectares, roughly three kilometres from Handley’s farm.
She had cattle pastured closer to the fire, though they were not in danger due to a divide created by a small lake.
“I have never in my life seen anything like that,” she says. “You see it on the news and on TV, but we had water bombers in Burnt River. It was crazy, it was so out of control. It was something else. I don’t want to ever see that again.”
As early as the second day of the fire, she contacted Scott Sabovitch, captain of Kawartha Lakes Fire Station 20 in Burnt River, to ask if she could drop off snacks and drinks to show her appreciation to the firefighters.
“I just wanted to do something,” she says. “I don’t even know how many there were — dozens and dozens of them fighting every day for 12 or 14 hours in 40-plus degree heat.”
She began bringing the firefighters water and Tim Hortons coffee, while also driving up the road multiple times a day to keep tabs on the fire. When she made a post on Facebook about the delivery, she was immediately supported by family, friends, and former customers who started sending her money and asking how they could be involved.
With more money, Handley was able to increase the loads, gathering together protein and granola bars, cases of Gatorade, muffins, coffee, croissants, Timbits, and bags of ice that would be used to fill the coolers across ground crew stations.
Her grocery bills of supplies would total upwards of $700.
“I borrowed three coolers from my neighbour, and I would take them into Sobeys and Foodland and I would just fill them with as many bags of ice as I could,” Handley says. “They were just forever grateful for that.”
As the fire continued to burn, she reported back to her community of Facebook connections what she was hearing from the firefighters, including messages of gratitude.
When the fire was finally held on August 13, Handley had to tell people to stop sending her money, responding to 90 private messages from her business page as well as another 30 on her personal page. By the time she got through those, there were another 10 messages from people eager to support the workers.
“They are just the absolute best,” she says of her Facebook followers. “There were people from around here that sent (money), but there were also people from the States who wanted to send money, because it was affecting me and my world.”
Handley says that, through the process, she was told by some of MNR workers that all the firefighters were appreciative and that they had never been so well treated by a community before.
“I love to hear that,” Handley says. “I’m just so grateful that nobody was hurt, and they obviously got (the fire) out.”
According to the MNR, the HAL019 fire was under control by August 15 and was fully extinguished on August 20 — 11 days after it started. The suspected cause of the fire was a lightning strike during a thunderstorm.
