Since opening its doors officially last Thursday, Emergency Social Services in Williams Lake has registered 73 wildfire evacuees.
Volunteer manager Eva Navrot said Tuesday morning at Lake City Secondary Williams Lake Campus where the centre is located that most of the people that have registered have come from Fort St. James, Burns Lake and Fraser Lake areas.
“They were mostly overflow from Prince George,” Navrot told the Tribune.
Once the word went out the ESS was open, many volunteers signed up and have been trained, and are on standby, she added.
“We are organized if it does get busy and are better prepared,” Navrot said.
Read more: Williams Lake ESS activated for possible arrival of wildfire evacuees from west of Prince George
On Monday, hundreds of personal hygiene care bags were put together for the ESS by United Way Nicola Thompson Cariboo in Williams Lake by volunteers and staff at the Tourism Discovery Centre, said executive director Ashlee Hyde.
“We got enough stuff to put together 700 personal hygiene bags from an organization called Soap for Hope that were delivered by ACE Courier’s general manager to us so we would have them on Saturday,” Hyde said Tuesday. “We also had some plastic bags donated by Safeway that we used to put the items in.”
Soap for Hope is an organization in Surrey dedicated to collecting and sanitizing gently used bar soaps from hotels.
“We are a global community of student, academic and business leaders committed to using the power of entrepreneurial action to transform lives and shape a better, more sustainable world,” the Soap for Hope website notes.
Hyde said she was volunteering at the ESS on Saturday and learned the centre could use some personal hygiene kits.
“I reached out to my contacts from last year to see what I could do,” she added.
The Postmen depot in Williams Lake is also gathering donations of supplies for evacuees as well as firefighters and Chuck Casselton is at the Canadian Tire garden centre Tuesday continuing to collect donations for evacuees.
Read more: Postmen collecting supplies in Williams Lake for firefighters and wildfire evacuees
Read more: Williams Lake gathering donations for wildfire evacuees in Prince George area
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