Replacing homes lost in Woodman blast moves closer, but still months away
Man who lost his home wants to return to the 'hood that helped him
There are a lot of things Chris Patterson will never forget about the night his next-door neighbour's house exploded on Woodman Avenue.
The evening of Aug. 14, 2019, had started innocently enough.
Patterson, 31, had finished a shift at Powerhouse Brewing where he works as head brew master. He and his partner Laura Earle were about to have a glass of wine when they heard a crash next door.
One moment he was helping the driver out of the car that had crashed into his neighbour's house at 450 Woodman Ave.
Moments later, he and everyone else near the corner of Woodman and Queens Avenue were ordered by firefighters to clear the area as the smell of gas hung in the air. Patterson, his neighbours and Earle — who had just had a cast removed after recovering from a broken foot — were making their way south to Dundas Street when the night sky lit up with flame.
"I can only really describe it as like something from a movie," said Patterson. "There was fire raining down on you as you were trying to get out of there."
The car had severed the house's gas line, filling 450 Woodman Ave. with fuel that detonated into a fireball. The house was destroyed and three others on the street were so badly damaged they had to be demolished in the days to come. Other homes on Woodman and nearby Charlotte Street were damaged by debris thrown from the blast. A handful of the homes that survived the blast remain vacant.
Patterson had bought the house only about a year earlier. He and Earle had fallen in love with the century-old brick home on the quiet street located close to his work.
But the blast had left the house too damaged to be saved.
"About the back 25 per cent of the house was blown off, as well as our entire patio," he said. "We knew pretty much that night that we weren't going to have that house again."
For the past year, Patterson has been living at his parents place while patiently making arrangements to build a new house on his lot at 448 Woodman Ave. A year after the explosion, the space where Patterson's house stood remains an empty lot.
Patterson visited the site of the blast with CBC News this week.
"It's still kind of surreal, the feelings that you have after you go through an experience like that are indescribable," he said.
Praise for first responders, OEV
Patterson remains grateful to many people who helped that night and in the days that followed.
He praises London firefighters for making the quick decision to recognize the danger and clear the area immediately.
"It's pretty unbelievable that no one died," he said. "It could have been a lot worse if we didn't have [the firefighters]."
He's also grateful to Londoners and local businesses that donated a combined $200,000 dollars, money which the Old East Village Community Association says has been distributed to affected families. Patterson also says he won't forget donations of food, toiletries and clothing that arrived hours after the blast.
Patterson admits he considered selling the lot and moving elsewhere, but says he now feels an even stronger bond to the neighbourhood that came together to help him and his neighbours in the hours and days after the explosion.
"We decided that we wanted to come back to this community that helped us out so much," he said. "This community is so great that we couldn't imagine living anywhere else."
Patterson is working through the details of rebuilding, but the COVID-19 outbreak has slowed down the process of getting the site plans approved.
Local builder, local designer
For now, he's working with AE Builders, a London company that is building a new house for Patterson and is also doing the builds of two other houses lost to the blast. The company was at city hall yesterday getting some final variances approved.
But Patterson says he won't be living on Woodman Avenue again until 2021 at the earliest.
"Hopefully we'll be able to break ground before the winter," he said.
Jenny Hecht, AE's co-owner, said they're taking steps to ensure the homes will be a good fit on the street.
"The homeowners made it known from the beginning that it was very important to them to maintain the characteristics of the neighbourhood with their rebuilds," she said.
Craig Jacobs, a building designer who lives in Old East Village, will be doing the designs.
"He is very talented with respecting the characteristics of the neighbourhood," said Hecht.