A rural Saskatchewan community is banding together to support a neighbour who lost her husband after a house fire.
Friends and neighbours are working to help Susan Martens and her family get back on their feet after the house fire late last week, near Outlook. Martens and her daughter managed to escape the blaze, but her husband Gordon did not.
A GoFundMe page has since been set up to help the family, and neighbours are donating household items, as well as feeding the family’s farm animals. One neighbour has also offered up his rental house for free to the Martens family, according to friend Christy Boot.
“It’s a true story of compassion and people wanting to do something,” said Boot, who set up the GoFundMe page. “They said they didn’t realize that many people cared.”
Gordon, who was 70, was born and raised in the house destroyed in the fire, according to a family friend.
An autopsy is scheduled for later this week, RCMP said Sunday.
Provincial fire investigators say the fire was too intense to determine the cause, but they don’t consider the blaze suspicious.
