I’ve just learned that one of my favorite cartoonists, Karen Ellis (the creative mind behind Planet Karen), lost her apartment to a fire last night. She doesn’t know how extensive the damage is to her own apartment, but the apartment above hers is (in her words) “toast” so I suspect she may have lost belongings and probably her computer and means of updating her comic.

While she’s not put out a request for donations and times are tough for many of us, it might be a nice gesture for people who can spare money to send some her way. Donations to Karen’s Paypal account can be made from the donation link on her main page; I tried linking it directly but the link from my system started giving errors for some reason.

Fortunately, Karen seems to be unhurt (or at least didn’t mention anything about injuries) and made it out safely.

Addendum: Karen just updated her comic (using other computers to get her update up) mentioning what happened. As I said before, Karen is safe. However, she was fortunate; her upstairs neighbor died in the blaze. I’ve been through a couple fire alarms in my own apartment. Both were false alarms (though with one the hallways were full of smoke; someone apparently really burned their dinner or something). It’s easy to start ignoring these alarms and think “it’s another false alarm.” The problem is… if you do that, the one time it’s not a false alarm, you could get hurt or worse.

Karen’s apartment is pretty trashed, and she’s not going to be able to stay there. I don’t know how damaged her belongings are, but I suspect any donations would be useful in helping her find a new place to stay and to replace any damaged or lost items.