A fire sprinkler system helped to save the building from the blaze but the toys were damaged by the water and smoke. The result is thousands of toys that were to be given to area children will not be of any use.
CTV sponsors the yearly toy drive during the fall. Because of last year’s drive 85,000 children in Toronto who may not have otherwise had gifts under their Christmas trees saw a little something from Santa.
About 100,000 toys were damaged in the fire. The Salvation Army keeps a reserve of toys because they only start to get donations in the fall. If they didn’t have the reserve the many area child whose parents rely on the charity may not have gifts.
“We don’t start to get enough toys in volume in order to meet the need at Christmas so we like to have some in reserve before we start and that way we just keep on replenishing as it comes,” he told CTV Toronto on Sunday. “So yeah, we have to get some toys in to restock so we have that lift-up during the Christmas season.”
It is estimated that $4 million of toys and food stocks were damaged. Although the building was covered by insurance it will still take time to replenish the lost items.
Clean up is expected to take several days.
You don’t want to see something like this happen at all,” said acting Toronto fire chief Don McCormack. “These toys would have gone to a very good cause.”
1 Comment
May 6, 2008 at 3:31 am
[...] unknown wrote an interesting post today onHere’s a quick excerptA fire broke out near Victoria Park and Lawrence Avenue in Toronto on Sunday destroying toys and food that were in a Salvation Army warehouse. The millions of dollars destroyed had been collected for the annual toy Mountain drive in the … [...]
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
You must be logged in to post a comment.