Patrick George Ziebart operated a one-of-a-kind store in Qualicum Beach that sold a bit of everything at prices that were often a mystery.
Ziebart, 67, has been identified by the B.C. Coroners Service as the person killed when fire hit the Remember That Collectibles antiques store on Fern Road about 10:30 a.m. last Friday. He lived in the one-storey building with his dog, which survived after being resuscitated by B.C. Ambulance paramedics using a device designed for animals.
Efforts to resuscitate Ziebart after he was pulled from the building were successful, but he died before an air ambulance could arrive to get him to hospital.
A fire inspector has determined the cause of the blaze was electrical, said Qualicum Beach Fire Chief Darryl Kohse. An overloaded circuit is a possible starting point, but that has yet to be determined, he said.
Kelly Atkinson said Ziebart was her children’s grandfather. She said in a brief email that he was “an amazing man [who] loved his family, friends and community. . . . He had a big, big heart.”
Marcus Pollard, a record collector from Victoria, often made his way to Ziebart’s store. Pollard remembers the aisles being packed with merchandise, including more than 5,000 vinyl records.
“His place had a little bit of everything,” Pollard said. “But for me, it was all about the records. They were unorganized and non-alphabetical, but he had lots of good stuff.”
Ziebart’s pricing system for records was lovably eccentric, Pollard recalled. “If it was priced at $10 or less, it was $5. If it was over $10, it was 50 per cent of that. He always said: ‘Everybody likes to get a deal.’ You literally never knew how much you had in your hands was going to cost you.”
Pollard said he probably purchased hundreds of records during his many trips to Qualicum and he will think fondly about the funky shop and its friendly owner next time he’s in the town.
“You just don't see places like that anymore,” he said. “And you never will. He was a nice guy. I’ll miss him and I’ll miss his store.”
Kohse said the death has been hard on the town’s firefighters and is “one of those surreal situations.” “Our guys are still trying to take it all in,” he said. “This is the first time this has happened to them. I think it’s the first time in my career that I’ve experienced a death from the result of a fire.”
The department, with about 30 members, scheduled a Tuesday night “critical-incident stress debriefing” to discuss the case and its tragic outcome. “We don’t really know what the total impact is on everybody,” Kohse said.
It’s unclear how long Ziebart was in the burning building before firefighters got him out.
“They got him on a gurney. He had no pulse and wasn’t breathing but they did resuscitate him.
“It was uplifting when we did get a pulse back, but still we were quite aware of the fact that he wasn’t out of the woods.
“It was unfortunate that he wasn’t able to hang on and get to a hospital where they could have probably done more for him.”
Kohse said he heard the dog is doing well and that a veterinarian had to shave it because of melted material stuck in its hair.
