Community stalwart @IcKY99 had an unfortunate turn of events recently with a house fire. Fortunately, he and his family are safe but it'll be roughly 5-6 months before the house will be repaired. Meanwhile, there are a few things you can do to help out a fellow VFer while he deals with this situation. Read on for details as well as the full story of what actually happened.

Icky commentating at EVO2018​

The following was posted by @IcKY99 on pastebin, and has been slightly edited for formatting.

Full Story
Saturday 1/26 in the AM hours my circuit breaker that controls my bedroom and bathrooms and hallway tripped, I reset the breaker and it would auto trip each time, replace the breaker with a new one and same issue. I leave it off and go without electricity in part of the house for 1 day.

Sunday 1/27 in the am a family electrician comes and checks, he and I both check all outlets and switch and ceiling fixtures we think may be an issue, correct one outlet that was wired wrong, but still the the breaker auto trips. He has to leave around 1 PM because of appointments. He recommends we call a 2nd electrician.

The 2nd electrician comes around 5 PM offers a free inspection because of having someone already there. He inspects and has the same hunch the first does, knows the issue but cannot find the short circuit, he states it may be in the original junction box or in the crawlspace. At that point he will have to charge. I tell him I will consult with my grandmother on what she wants to do, she says well wait another night. So we plan to do that.

That evening at 10 PM I go to the bathroom, everyone is asleep but I taste and smell smoke in the air, I go to the living room and see that it is full of haze, check the stove/oven to see if it they had been left on but that wasn't the issue. I go back to the hallway and hear what I thought was rats scurrying but it was actually the crackle of fire in the crawlspace, I touch the ceiling of the hallway to be sure and yes it was burning hot. Right then and there I knew right away at some point during our testing a short circuit had cause a spark at sometime and started smoldering slowly between the time the 2nd electrician came and 10 PM.

When I realized the crawlspace was on fire I woke up my grandparents and got them out of the house and retrieved the most valuable things we could quickly access and fit in a few backpacks/trash bags and got out within 10-15 minutes of realizing what was going on. By 10:30 PM the fire dept was cutting holes into the roof to flood the crawlspace and hallway that was blazing by then. I am grateful to have my grandparents safe and majority of our material possessions weren't destroyed (mostly clothes in one room and photographs in the hallway) that was blasted by water and ceiling debris. But yeah the real important thing was our lives.

Now just awaiting to see what the house is gonna be rebuilt.

How you can help
Here's a list of what I need help with until my insurance helps, I don't feel its right to ask for more than whats listed here. I am very very fortunate to not have lost any one my video games or pcbs.

We do have home owners insurance and hopefully that kicks in and does its thing and covers the really important stuff like fixes to the house etc. You don't have to donate but anything helps. Thank you so much!

• 2/3rds of my clothes are not salvageable due smoke contamination, basically need to buy at least a weeks worth of pants/shirts to not wear the shit I brought with me over and over.
• 1 x Rocketfish 8 outlet surge protector is ruined due to water damage.
• 1 x Hori HRAP3 was also damaged by hose water since it was on the floor under the dresser, I can salvage the case but I think the PCB is waxed.

Links to help

• https://streamlabs.com/ickyy - donate there or buy a shirt to support
• https://tinyurl.com/ickydonate - paypal direct
• https://twitch.tv/icky99 - just sub to me on twitch or bits