A return home: Fort McMurray residents return to areas worst hit by wildfire
Months after a wildfire forced the evacuation of an entire city, residents in some of Fort McMurray's hardest hit neighbourhoods are finally returning home.
About two-thirds of residents in Abasand and Beacon Hill were granted access to their decimated neighbourhoods for the first time Wednesday morning.
More than 400 homes were included in the latest wave of a re-entry process, which began in June.
By 11 a.m., only 12 families had registered to return to Abasand, only four had returned to Beacon Hill.
But municipal officials expected those numbers to rise through the day.
Karen Kelly and her daughter Zoe came back to Abasand before the official move-back date on Sunday night.
The mother and daughter spent Tuesday night chalking their streets with a sign that said "Welcome Home."
Since May, they were staying with relatives in Newfoundland. Both say they're happy to finally be back.
"We've been out of our home for three months and it's time to be home," Kelly said.
Most of their neighbours haven't returned because they're still cleaning smoke damage or basements that flooded because sump pumps lost power.
"I'm looking back for Zoe's friends being home. I sent her out a couple days to go play and she's like, 'I have no one to play with,'" Kelly said.
She said she will be keeping busy overseeing the clean-up of smoke damage and repairs to the roof.
Not everyone was allowed to return home. Hundreds of homes in Abasand and Beacon Hill remain off-limits, and re-entry to the neighbourhood of Waterways remains restricted. About 85 per cent of the houses there were destroyed and the area is still considered too dangerous.
Toxic debris from homes destroyed in the fire will need to be removed before the restricted areas are considered safe.
At a municipal news conference Wednesday morning, Mayor Melissa Blake acknowledged it was a bittersweet home-coming for many residents.
"As I stand here, I feel very conflicted about the celebration that we have," Blake said. "It's a very long journey. I'll be satisfied when we're all in our homes."
Blake said the bylaw that has prevented rebuilding in restricted areas should be lifted by the end of the month, and called the ongoing construction boom a "silver lining" in the tragedy.
More than 700 contractors had completed mandatory orientation by Tuesday, which will allow them to work in the affected areas.
Blake said further flood mitigation measures need to be explored with the province, before work in Waterways can begin in earnest. The original historic townsite for the city is located on a flood plain, and there have been concerns about how the neighbourhood will be redeveloped after being all but wiped out by the fire.
The wildfire, nicknamed The Beast, ripped through the northern Alberta city in early May, destroying 2,400 homes and buildings and forcing the evacuation of more than 90,000 residents from Alberta's oilsands region.
