Help a Cellist and her family after fire incident

*Trigger Warning*

Experiencing trauma and living with it, is still something I am coming to terms with. The event that occurred is very recent and will remain with me forever. But the aftermath of this event has put an incredible amount of strain on my family. It is a string of hardships which is never ending. The last two years have been difficult anyway with the Pandemic and losing family in Japan (We still haven’t been able to visit because of travel restrictions and didn’t get to say goodbye). I would like to share this vulnerable episode of our life so that my family’s voices in particular can be heard.

A brief summary of the tragedy:

- 16th December 2021 -

Watching my neighbour who I had known for 20 years, go down in the flames with the rest of his house and knowing that there was nothing we could do to save him, was truly devastating.

Running out of my own home with my two cellos on my back and a bag which happened to contain some essentials, whilst screaming at my family to get out, was terrifying.

Even as the first caller, the seven minute wait for the Fire Brigade and Emergency Services to arrive, felt like hours and was utter agony.

And never in my life did I think I would end up homeless, especially in a pandemic and in the run up to the festive season. I am so grateful that my family home did not burn down but it suffered enough damage to become uninhabitable. Since then, we have been in and out of hotels, living out of suitcases. We are physically, mentally and emotionally drained. Some days are worse than others. Just when we thought we would be able to move into a longer term accommodation in the new year, things fell through and yet again we will be living out of our suitcases for at least a month.

The insurance company will be covering the costs of the accommodations but unfortunately that is as far as it goes. In these last few weeks we have had to spend an incredible amount of money on takeout food as we haven’t had any catering facilities, many laundry trips (All of our clothes and belongings smell of smoke), storage (We’ve had to move most of our stuff out), transportation and many more extra expenses that have come out from the result of this awful incident. Least of all, the days off work to deal with this situation.

Had it not been for the incredible amount of love and support from so many people, I would not be as “ok” as I am now. I am truly grateful for those people in my life.

Creating this gofundme page was definitely a last resort and I am not entirely comfortable with it. But I am doing this for my parents and the torment they are going through. At this stage in their lives, they should not have to be thrown out of their beloved home and have to deal with this mess.

So I would really appreciate it if you could share this snippet of story and possibly donate if you can. We just want to get back to a semi-normal life and have a permanent roof over our heads.

Thank you for reading this.

Yurie