Ron Umpherville was sound asleep in the warming centre when his friend Hank came in to wake him with the news his teepee home in Moccasin Flats had been destroyed in a fire Monday morning.
Unpherville thought he was joking, but it was true.
His friend Jim had been staying in the teepee and apparently had stoked the wood stove a bit too hot to try to ward off the -27 C cold overnight and it sparked a flame on the plastic tarp used to wrap the poles. Jim escaped uninjured.
“He liked to overload that fire all the time and it got too hot,” said Umpherville, while surveying the burnt remains of his camp. “I can tell right now, it started at the bottom, because that bed wouldn’t be burned like that if it came from the top.”
By the time firefighters arrived at about 7 a.m., there wasn’t much left to salvage.
“I had my clothes and everything I owned, nothing of value,” said Umpherville, who put the teepee up when he moved to the flats from the AWAC shelter last spring.
“It took me a month and a half to build it,” said Umpherville. “All my blankets were in there. Oh, well. Hopefully that motel opens up soon.”
Ron worked as a labourer most of his life and fell into hard times and alcoholism, which let him without a permanent home. The cold weather that’s gripped the city the past week only aggravates a persistent choking cough.
“I worked hard all my life at anything and everything,” the 61-year-old said.
Umpherville was well known for decades around the city ball diamonds during his fastball career in the Spruce City Men’s Fastball Association. He played second or third base and his twin brother Don was a pitcher for the Falcons and together on a team that won the Native Canadian Fastball Championships.
“My dad was a pitcher and my mom was a pitcher too,” he said.
“We’re twins and we started at the same time when we were five. (Don) was a pitcher and I started out in the field and then moved into the infield.”
It’s estimated there are about 300 homeless people in Prince George. Ron is among a group of about 20 Moccasin Flats residents who continue to live there through the winter. It’s not where he wants to be.
“It’s up and down, too much anger, too much poverty,” he said.
“We just need some homes, give us some privacy. We’re humans and we deserve to live like everybody else. We can’t afford the rent so how can we go anywhere else, that’s about it.
“People are naïve, they don’t know what’s going on around here. I didn’t want to be here.”
Last week, the Association Advocating for Women and Community took over operating the warming centre in a building on the other side of the north fence that runs through the length of Moccasin Flats.
The warming centre is staffed by three outreach workers 24/7 and it provides shelter, shower/washrooms and food and drinks to all visitors. For Umpherville, it’s been a godsend.
“It’s awesome, it’s made a big, big difference,” he said. “People are smiling, people are happy.”
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