A road-weary Fort McMurray family of five is looking for a place to live in Olds after fleeing this month's wildfires.
Tosha Moore says they've received some offers but need space -- for her, spouse Shane and children: 13-year-old Mollie, two-year-old Wyatt and 10-month-old Sierra. Ideally, rent would not cost more than $1,600 per month.
Until then, they are staying in a family friend's house in Red Deer.
On May 3, from her parents' house in Fort McMurray's Westview area, where they had been living, Moore saw the fire spreading in the distance. Her immediate reaction was to grab the two youngest children and leave.
She picked up Mollie from high school and headed north to the oilfield camps. They left at 2:30 p.m., shortly before the first evacuation order. But once there, Moore says they were turned away and believes those at the camps did not understand the severity of the situation.
From there, Moore drove to Fort MacKay, a small community 58 kilometres north of Fort McMurray that took in evacuees. They stayed there until midnight, where she reunited with her spouse.
She received a tip from a friend in the know, that the community would be evacuated the next day. So the family drove south, through Fort McMurray at 2 a.m., in their Dodge minivan, bringing with them nothing but the clothes on their backs, some diapers and baby formula.
Moore says she wondered if she was asking her spouse to drive them to their deaths. But she was worried about the fires spreading north and wanted to get out.
South on Highway 63 they went, going east on Highway 881 to Anzac, a hamlet in the Regional Municipality of Wood Buffalo.
However, Anzac was evacuated as well, so the Moores went south again on Highway 63, hoping to reach Wandering River without running of gas. Moore says the road was lined with abandoned cars that had done just that.
They were able to fill up at Grassland and continued to Fort Saskatchewan, where a friend of theirs owns an acreage.
They arrived at 3:30 p.m. on May 4, after a 25-hour journey.
Moore says she was up at 6 a.m. the day they left Fort McMurray. It was another 33 hours until she would sleep again.
In Fort McMurray, Moore works as a consultant for Aboriginal and environmental stakeholders. Her employers suggested she enroll at Olds College, which she will this fall, taking a double major in reclamation and environmental stewardship.
As for her home, she believes it survived the fires. Moore says she asked Shaw to send a signal to an Internet modem, which responded. She's hopeful, but expects there to be damage.
She's reaching out to the community to help them get settled. She can be reached at [email protected]
