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'I'm ready to start over'

Michelle Wifladt and her two young daughters were asleep in their third-floor Rockhill Apartment unit Tuesday when the sound of blaring fire alarms and shouting neighbours pierced the early morning stillness. Panicked, Michelle and her boyfriend, Mickey Gordon, quickly dressed Vayda, born just 12 days earlier, and two-year-old Hevaeh.

Mickey grabbed his phone. Michelle took a diaper bag.

“That’s all we left with because I seriously thought we’d be going back in,” said Michelle in an interview with Yellowknifer.

But Michelle didn’t go back to her daughters’ first home – she couldn't.

By 9 a.m., Rockhill Apartments – a 54 Avenue building that provided transitional housing through the YWCA NWT – was totally gutted, ravaged by a roaring fire that left 33 families homeless, including Michelle’s.

“I was completely devastated. I thought we’d be going home and I did not think we’d be losing all our belongings we worked so hard for,” the young mother told Yellowknifer.

The fire’s “unbelievable” path of destruction left Michelle shocked – but it wasn't a first for her.

In 2015, Michelle and Mickey were forced from their apartment after the Polaris Apartments building, located just blocks from Rockhill Apartments, burned to the ground.

Brendan Burke/NNSL photo.
Mickey Gordon, centre, holds his daughter Hevaeh alongside his girlfriend Michelle Wifladt in front of the charred remains of Rockhill Apartments – their former home. On Tuesday, the couple rushed out of their unit with Hevaeh and their newborn baby Vayda. They lost everything.

Three years later, Michelle, now a mother of two young children, was left without a home again.

After attending a temporary shelter at the Fieldhouse along with other displaced families on Tuesday, Michelle and her family were re-housed the next day, receiving the keys to a Rockridge Apartment unit.

The unit, also located on 54 Avenue, is one the many Northview-owned spaces secured by the YWCA on the day of the fire.

Across the street from Michelle’s new unit lies a charred heap of concrete and steel: what’s left of her former home

It’s a new reality Michelle has come to accept.

“I have realized that everything can be replaced,” said Michelle. “What happened has happened and I can’t change it … I’m ready to start over with my family,” she said.

The difficult do-over, Michelle said, has been made easier thanks to an outpouring of support from family members and strangers alike.

“The girls didn’t have anything. Now they have a bunch of clothes, toys, shoes. I’m just so grateful for everybody who was donated.”

Michelle said her children are doing well, and that they’re too young to fully grasp the gravity of Tuesday’s tragedy.

But Hevaeh, Michelle said, is aware they’ve been uprooted.

Brendan Burke/NNSL photo.
On Thursday, two days after a devastating blaze gutted their home, Mickey, Hevaeh, Vayda and Michelle moved into their new YWCA NWT-provided unit at Rockridge Apartments. Thanks to generous donations from relatives and strangers alike, Michelle says her family now has all the essentials they need to “start over.”

She saw (the remains of Rockhill) and she was saying, ‘Oh no. Broken,’” recalled Michelle.

By Thursday afternoon, Michelle and her family had moved in to their new home.

The YWCA NWT is working with community partners and businesses to deliver furniture and essential houseware donations to families in need. New beds were brought into the displaced tenants’ new units, a move Michelle called “amazing.”

A crib for Vayda – one of the family's desperately needed items – was donated Thursday.

After losing so much, Michelle said she’s choosing to remember what has remained – her family.