Cariboo Chevrolet Buick GMC in Williams Lake is hoping to fill up a container with items that will benefit evacuees from Fort McMurray.
General Sales Manager, Doug Peters, says the idea to fill a container, all started when two of his staff saw the devastating images of the fire on Facebook and realized that someone had to pick up the ball and run with it.
“Marilee Vickers, one of my sales ladies, and Karolynn Rhodes who is my business manager, she got it spearheaded. I called the Contain-it people and they said they would be able to help, brought the container here in an hour and a half.”
Peters says he then called Schickworks, adding that everyone just banded together.
“They were happy to make some signage for us-everything was donated. PHL-Progressive Harvesting, Tim Tugnum, their company said they would low bed the c can and take it to Edmonton to the relief centre.”
About 3 hours after he launched the initiative on Facebook, Peters says they had almost 2,000 people that touched it in some way, shape, or form.
“I guess they’ve come to a realization that no matter how bad your day is, it isn’t like you lost everything so you know what take a good look in the mirror and say hey we have it pretty good. We’re not in that kind of position, but we’ve got to help those people because if it happened to us, we’d have nowhere to go.”
As for when the shipping container will be sent out to Edmonton by Progressive Harvest Limited, Peters hopes it can be as soon as possible.
“If we have to fill two cans or three cans or whatever, I’m sure that the support in Williams Lake will be such that we can get some other truck drivers involved or whatever else and get this done.”
Items that the Edmonton Emergency Relief have put a call out for include bottled water, baby food, diapers, baby wipes, and new toiletries and non perishable food items that do not need to be heated up as well as any animal food.
As of Wednesday afternoon, an estimated 1,600 homes and buildings had been destroyed with the province of Alberta declaring a state of emergency.