The House Fire Incident occurred in the morning of March 27th, 2021 when due to an accident Bradley's house burned down.
Prelude
Bradley had been streaming as normal in the weeks leading up to this incident. On the 25th of March, Bradley once again streamed as normal but changed things up by starting a new character on the game Archeage Unchained. Unfortunately after progressing through the character creator Bradley noticed he was having real performance issues with the game and blamed it on the fact he was livestreaming. As a result of this, Bradley said goodbye to chat and shut down his stream.
The next day Bradley was online as usual, but despite requests to stream more Dota he didn't start his stream. Bradley had already become obsessed with Archeage Unchained and had been up most of the previous night grinding the game, he didn't want to stop to play Dota so he decided to skip a day of streaming while he continued his grind.
The Fire
Bradley stayed up all night continuing his grind and was just about to head to sleep (~11:15AM) when he claims he heard a "Loud bang" and shortly after both smelled and saw smoke coming from the hallway outside his room. Bradley's roommates opened the bathroom window to escape by climbing out to the roof. Flames were already starting to grow so Bradley opened a larger window in his room on the second floor and was able to use a plank that had been propped up against the side of the house by neighbours trying to help to allow him to climb down and escape the fire. As Bradley escaped he suffered scrapes to his elbows and knees and was burnt as burning cladding came off the house and struck him on the hip causing a wide burn approximately 4 inches in diameter.
Shortly after Bradley escaped the house the Indianapolis Fire Department arrived and began fighting the fire which had already spread substantially through the building. After 25 minutes of effort from the Fire Department the fire was successfully put out and the danger was over. Bradley was taken to Eskenazi hospital to get his burn treated and to monitor for the adverse effects of smoke inhalation. His burn was treated with bandages and he was given Hydrocodone to help manage the pain before being discharged. Bradley's other roommates were also sent to hospital with similar injuries.
Pretty nasty... nasty business. All in all. -Bradley Dragon
Brad's Community find out
Bradley's community became aware that something was wrong when they noticed Bradley's Discord had been offline for hours - an incredibly rare occurrence that usually only happened if he was moving house. In the evening of the 28th of March Bradley came back online via mobile to share what had happened to him and also share a fundraiser link to allow community members to support him if they wanted to. Nine members of Bradley's community donated to him via this Gofundme and Bradley was able to raise a total of $275. At this point Bradley informed his community that he was unsure if his computer had been destroyed in the fire and he didn't know when he would be able to return to streaming if it was indeed destroyed.
The Aftermath
Bradley was unfortunately now homeless as the damage to the house from the fire made his house unliveable. He spent the following two nights sleeping in his car before his landlord Joel offered Bradley alternative emergency accommodation in another of his properties that wasn't furnished or fully developed yet. Bradley states that the house had intermittent power, very little wireless connection and was freezing cold. After a couple of nights there he moved to a hotel, using both the money raised from his Gofundme and money he was able to claim from the Red Cross to help in the emergency.
Bradley was able to revisit the house at this time and though he had lost many of his possessions he was very happy to find that his computer had survived the fire. Bradley attributed it's survival both to his quick thinking and luck. Bradley believes opening a window and closing his door to lessen the amount of smoke that collected in his room saved the computer from too much smoke damage, and a ceiling panel that fell over the computer also saved it from water damage from firefighters extinguishing the blaze.
Sadly a stream favourite item was destroyed in the fire, Bradley's Tidehunter plushie was too damaged by the smoke to remain usable and Bradley was forced to get rid of it. Bradley's second computer monitor was also destroyed.
Bradley was able to resume streaming after this incident from his hotel on the 2nd April 2021, this began the 10 day long Hotel Arc.
Causes of the fire
The initial cause of the fire wasn't clear, Bradley's first assumption was that his roommate Alex had knocked over a candle beginning the blaze. However this didn't make much sense as Alex wasn't present at the time. Later investigations from the fire department confirmed the source of the blaze was from indeed from a candle but rather than being knocked over the candle was simply placed too close to a malfunctioning oil heater. The candle ignited the oil heater causing an explosion and very rapidly spreading the flames through the house.
Some people insist the fire was in fact caused by Bradley's inner Dragon powers awakening, however this theory is completely unsubstantiated and Bradley gets very angry if anyone tries to imply he had a hand in causing the fire. This suggests it is just a malicious rumour made up by trolls.
All that we know is that there was a fire that happened in about 10-15 seconds. Suddenly it went from everything was fine to "Oh my fucking God there's a fire!". It was that fast. It was like spontaneously a giganto flame of black oil smoke... -Bradley Dragon
Media
Various organisations made articles and social media posts about the fire, archives of their posts and on scene photos can be found below.
