Bonnyville welcomes Fort McMurray evacuees
Lydia Neufeld, Andrea Huncar | CBC News | Posted: May 12, 2016 7:00 PM | Last Updated: May 12, 2016
Province has upgraded Bonnyville to an official reception centre for Fort McMurray evacuees
Dozens of people have arrived in Bonnyville as the town opens its doors to Fort McMurray residents in need of a temporary home.
Hundreds more are expected to arrive in the town 240 km northeast of Edmonton in the coming days.
"We're so happy that we're here and we'll live in a hotel soon," said Marilou Dogonon.
Dogonon has been staying at the Bold Centre in Lac La Biche with other evacuees. Now that she has made her way to Bonnyville she will trade her army cot in a rec centre for a bed and a little bit of privacy.
Bonnyville has been upgraded from a check-in centre to an official reception centre for people displaced because of the wildfire in Fort McMurray.
That means the province will cover the cost of providing food and lodging for any of the 94,000 Fort McMurray residents who fled the wildfire last week and end up at the Bonnyville centre.
"To the uninitiated it looks overwhelming, it looks awesome. How do you organize it? We don't, it just happens," said Mayor Gene Sobolewski on Wednesday.
Bonnyville, a town of 7,000 residents, is an industrial hub for the oil and gas industry. With the downturn in the economy there are many empty hotel rooms, and work camps. Sobolewski said the community saw this as an opportunity to help.
"Rather than people in cots, we can put them in beds, we've got the space," the mayor said.
When asked how she felt about leaving an evacuation centre in Lac La Biche for a hotel room in Bonnyville, Emiline Angeline Lagmodiere grinned and said, "I feel good, thank the good Lord."
While appreciative of the temporary shelter in Lac La Biche, Lagmodiere said it was not very comfortable spending the last seven nights on a cot in the Bold Center, a sprawling recreation facility.
"It was cold because the ice was on the other side of the curling rink. You had to wear a fur hat. You had to wear gloves to bed and blankets over blankets."
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