I have learned that fellow DP Yves Simard, known on Twitter as @CrewsTV, has lost his family’s home in New Zealand in a fire that burned the place to the ground.

Luckily, nobody was hurt and his wife was able to save herself and the children, but virtually all of their possessions are gone.

Read Yves’ own update on where they stand right now by clicking here.

Here’s an excerpt from the full text:

Our kids are safe. At first a bit traumatized but now things are settling in. They are around people that love them very much and they know it. They have truly lost all their possessions. Quaily and I managed to recover their dress-up box. Their imaginary world was saved and I can’t wait to show it to them tomorrow. But literally all they had was the swimming suits they had on and wore to bed, I have no idea what that must be like for them. But kids don’t need much and the boxes of clothes, toys and games that arrived the next day created a Christmas like atmosphere last night that warmed my heart because I could never have been able to do that on my own. They sang and laughed themselves to sleep. Thank you, today that has been my greatest gift. I have so many people to thank.. too many.. I have no idea where to start.

I have asked Yves if there is anything I can do to help, and he said donations for their immediate needs would be more than welcome to help them get through this tough times. The house is insured, so that seems to be good, but they can use our help to get things going again as soon as possible.

Here is the donation link via PayPal he supplied me with:

Please help if you can, let’s make sure this family can have a nice Christmas despite what happened. Thanks to Greg (VisionWrangler) through whom I first heard of the tragedy.