Watch above: The number of evacuees remaining in Saskatoon this week will be down to the double digits leaving civic facilities vacant. Joel Senick takes a look at clean-up efforts and how it will take to get back to regular activities.
SASKATOON – Saskatoon’s SaskTel Sports Centre reopened to the general public Tuesday after being used by the Saskatchewan Red Cross for almost three weeks as a shelter for northern residents displaced by wildfires.
A number of evacuees left the shelter Sunday, either to their northern communities or to the Henk Ruys Soccer Centre, Saskatoon’s other shelter. It took three days for the centre to be prepared for public use.
“We recognize it’s a busy time of year for these facilities,” said Dave Kyba, the Saskatchewan Red Cross planning and response lead.
“During the summer there’s other stuff that’s happening, so we try to turn it around within three or four days.”
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Roughly 55 evacuees remain at the Henk Ruys centre, which housed 650 residents at the peak of the wildfire crisis. Red Cross officials are not willing to speculate when they’ll be able to leave.
“We don’t want to sort of give any false expectations or false hopes, so we wait for that green light before we actually start to move,” said Kyba.
Once they are able to leave, cleanup will commence at the facility, according to Saskatoon Soccer Centre Inc. CEO Jodi Blackwell. She says the process likely won’t take much longer than at the SaskTel Sports Centre, even though Henk Ruys was in operation as a shelter for a longer period of time.
“We have a great team of staff and other volunteer resources that we bring in to help us get back into operation really quickly,” said Blackwell.
One person involved in the operation is Jose Perez, the owner of a Saskatoon-based cleaning company. He and a handful of workers were putting the finishing touches on the SaskTel Sports Centre Tuesday morning.
“It’s a massive job,” said Perez, as he took a break from washing the floors in the centre’s entrance.
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