Wed, 20 Jul, 2011
A large Calgary family is struggling to replace important documents after fire ripped through their northeast townhouse.
The upstairs floor of Abdulrazak Ali's rented home on Tarawood Lane N.E. was all but destroyed by a fire overnight Sunday. Much of his family's identification is gone.
"All the documents. Everything we have is gone. Nothing left," he said.
Ali said three of his children were born in Canada, while three were born in Somalia, the homeland of him and his wife.
Calgary immigration lawyer Michael Greene says getting new documents is fairly straightforward but can take time.
"There is processing times involved, and so people end up with little or no identification for long periods of time. If you look for instance on the government of Canada website for replacing citizenship documents, they'll tell you it takes ten months to process that application. Well, that would be a big problem for some people."
Greene says everyone should make photocopies of important documents and keep them in a safe place.
No one was hurt in the fire and firefighters credited a smoke alarm with saving the lives of the seven occupants.
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