We revist the scene of a nasty house fire in Bloxwich and meet a You Tuber who after speaking to one of the families that have had to move, has taken it upon himself to do what he can to help them out.
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00:00So we're here in Mossley, block switch, and we're with Scott. Hello, sir.
00:04Hi, mate.
00:05So, Scott, you're a local lad, a Warsaw lad, and you're a gardener by trade.
00:11Yep.
00:11And there's a bit of a mess behind you. It's a story I'm sure a lot of people are familiar with here.
00:16We've had the explosion on the house there.
00:18Now, you were working on one of the houses just opposite, weren't you?
00:22Well, over in the close, just over the road, yeah, that's right.
00:25And one of your friend's relatives lives on the white one towards the end there, is that right?
00:30Yeah, that's correct, yeah.
00:31So you kind of heard about what had gone on.
00:33You met one of the families that live in the house just next door to that white one with the white PVC windows.
00:42And you were chatting to them, and that's led to you getting involved.
00:45You couldn't help yourself. You're a decent man. You wanted to help. Fill us in.
00:50Yeah, as you say, really, I got talking to two of his young boys, where I basically just asked them.
00:59I said, oh, do you live in here? And they said, oh, yeah, our house has been burnt, and we've had to move out.
01:06Obviously, having children myself, it kind of hit home that, you know, Christ, that could have been me, right?
01:11That could be me and my family, and I couldn't help but, you know, couldn't help but feel some kind of compassion for them and the family.
01:20The dad came over. I was speaking to him.
01:23I have a little bit of a platform on YouTube, a YouTube channel with a fairly decent size.
01:31And I asked if they would mind if I set up a crowd for me or a GoFundMe for them as a family to just help.
01:38As I said, any money is not going to replace their possessions. It's not going to put them back in their home.
01:43But if there's anything I could do to kind of just try and make their situation a little bit less stressful during this traumatic time, then it was something that I wanted to do and give a go.
01:55Told it may not work, but we could give it a go.
01:58He said, yeah, of course. So we exchanged numbers.
02:00I went home that night. I made a GoFundMe.
02:05I also put a couple of posts up on local Facebook groups with the GoFundMe, seeing if people would help.
02:13The response I've had in the last 36 hours has been amazing from people all over Warsaw.
02:19There's a lot of good people out there, isn't there?
02:21There is.
02:22We're having a little chit-chat off camera and you often hear about a lot of the stuff that's going on in Warsaw and sometimes it's a bit negative.
02:29But you've just realised there's tons of good people, isn't there, who want to get involved and want to help.
02:34Yeah, as I say, I don't know the family. A lot of the people that have reached out to me do not know the family.
02:41I think it's just resonated with a lot of people that this could happen to any one of us.
02:47It's times like this, I think, that communities need to start coming together a little bit more and trying to help one another.
02:53So that's really all. I've set the GoFundMe up. I think we've got £450 or something as it stands in there in the last 36 hours.
03:01I've done a collection run after work last night where I went and picked up clothes, toys, soft toys for the children mainly yesterday.
03:10I've had more people in the last 24 hours or the last 12 hours also message me, so I'm going to be doing another one tonight, another collection run tonight.
03:19Once I've done that collection run, I'll be meeting up with the family again to hand them the donations.
03:25I also give them £500 cash yesterday because what we don't want to do is we don't want to touch that GoFundMe too early
03:32because obviously people might start wondering why it is that money's coming out of there before we've hit the target.
03:37So we've given £500 just to hopefully see them through a little bit.
03:41Like he said, that's hopefully just going to get the children.
03:43As the parents said, they can go without.
03:45They just want to try and make the children feel a bit more at ease and try and replace some of their stuff.
03:52So if people want to find out about the GoFundMe, how do they find that then, Scott?
03:56You can find that, the actual title for that GoFundMe.
04:00You're going to have to bear with me.
04:01No worries.
04:01And give a shout out to your YouTube channel then, buddy.
04:04What's that called?
04:04The channel is Bear Britain Audits.
04:05Now, again, this isn't about me.
04:09It's not about me being deemed a local hero because actually every single person that's reached out to me in the last 36, 48 hours,
04:17they're also, if that's the case, if I'm meant to be one, so is everyone in this community.
04:22It was a collected effort.
04:24I'm just someone with a platform that wanted to try and use my knowledge of social media in the last few years
04:30and how to present things on social media in trying to get these fundraisers up and going.
04:36At the moment, like I said, I have focused solely on the one family just because they're the only ones I've had contact with.
04:42I would like to possibly broaden that to the rest of the people also affected.
04:48I just haven't had contact with them.
04:51But this GoFundMe is titled, if anybody wants to go over to it, you will find it.
04:58If you type in family who have lost possessions in house fire, you will find it there.
05:03There's a picture of the building as it sits today.
05:09So people will be able to recognise it.
05:12And yeah, you know, it's actually at £490.
05:17Awesome.
05:18And as I say, it's been up no more than 36 hours.
05:23Great.
05:23So it's doing really well.
05:26Well, thank you, Scott.
05:27And, you know, on behalf of the family you're trying to do your best for there.
05:31Yeah.
05:31Can I just...
05:32Yeah, so could I just say a big massive thank you to everybody that's reached out to myself?
05:37Not just myself, but I believe there's other people also doing what they can that I haven't spoke to.
05:43I just want to say thank you to everybody because, again, this could have happened to any of us.
05:48And to see the community coming together the way it has, I think, is fantastic.
05:53From people from Blakeneall, from Blockswitch to Mossley to other parts of other boroughs within Warsaw,
06:02I just want to say a massive thank you to everyone on behalf of the family as well.
06:06It really does mean the world to them.
06:09They were asked if they would like to move up the local area.
06:12And he's turned around and said, no way.
06:14After the response they've had, they would never want to move out of this community.
06:20They're really overwhelmed.
06:22And, yeah, this community is where they want to be.
06:26After the response that they've had and the people that have wanted to help, they don't want to go anywhere.
06:31They want to stay here and they want to be a part of this amazing community that we have here in Mossley.
06:36Again, we have around the rest of Warsaw.
06:38It really is full of good people with kind hearts and show a lot of compassion.
06:44So I just want to say thank you to everybody on behalf of myself and on behalf of the family, really.