Jeanne Boucher was at work at Callaghan's store in Bear Lake on Monday morning when she got word of a house fire in the small town about 70 kilometeres north of Prince George.
As chief of the community's volunteer fire department, Jeanne expects to receive those calls but this one was different.
It was her home that was on fire.
Jeanne quickly alerted her deputy to sound the alarm and then rushed home to find that a chimney fire had spread to the ceiling and was beginning to consume the entire mobile home.
Her stepson was the only one home at the time and he was able to get out of the building in time, along with the family dog.
Jeanne and others on the scene tried to get water on the blaze, but to no avail. She said the minutes it took the firefighters to arrive felt like hours and by the time they reached her home it was fully ablaze.
"It's got to be totally ripped out and I'll need to rebuild or get one those pre-fab homes," she said.
The loss of her home comes on the heels of the sudden death of her husband Bill last summer. The two blows have left Jeanne reeling as she tries to sort out what's next.
"I'll keep putting one foot in front of the next and keep plugging away at the store to keep busy and try to find a life again," she said. "At least one that's not going to hurt so bad."
In the meantime Jeanne has found temporary shelter a friend's home in Bear Lake and she said the community has come together to help her in her time of need. A fund has been set up at Callaghan's store to help her deal with the costs associated with losing her home.
"I live in a small community so of course I have everybody trying to help," he said. "All I can do is take it one step and one day at a time."
When it became clear to Jeanne that the fire at her home was too big to put out, she made one last dash into the burning building to salvage what she could. At the time all she could think of was trying to grab some keepsakes to remember her husband by.
She grabbed Bill's ashes, some jewelry and his chain saw. Bill had been a faller and instinctively she grabbed the tool of his trade before going out the door. She doesn't know what she's going to do with the chain saw, but in the stress of the moment she knows why she reached for it.
"All I could think of was Bill," she said.
Bill died in July due to complications associated with liver failure. Jeanne said they didn't even realize he was ill and it was too late.
"I know I haven't fully dealt with that yet," she said. "I haven't done the anger thing at all and now I've got this. I'm kind of getting scared, I guess."
The grieving process is still raw and now she also has to come to terms with losing her home and so many of her belongings.
"I've sort of wrapped my head around [the fire], but I haven't wrapped my head around it," she said. "I'm in shock, I'm stressed, I'm physically sick right now. I just can't take another punch in the gut, I really can't."
