The Thompson-Nicola Regional District has opened a resource centre for wildfire evacuees in Kamloops – with plans to take another on the road.

The so-called Resiliency and Recovery Centre located at Suite 3 at Northills Mall can connect people with a number of services – including insurance, Service Canada, ICBC Driver’s Services – as well as a number of NGO’s and other specialized services.

“One of the best things we do is we bring all the services that we think they’re going to need and we bring them to one location,” Resiliency and Recovery Manager for the TNRD, Dale Kronebusch, told NL News.

The plan, he adds, is to also take a five-or-six person resource centre to evacuees that are scattered across the province.

“We’ve got evacuees from this from the Thompson-Nicola Regional District in North Vancouver, they’re in Abbotsford, they’re in Langley, they’re in Chilliwack, they’re in Hope, at Camp Hope, they’re in Kamloops, they’re in Merritt, they’re down – some even got registered and got housing down in Salmon Arm – and down in Kelowna,” Kronebusch said.

The brick and mortar version of the centre is open seven days a week between 8:30am and 4:30pm.

“That’s subject to change,” Kronebusch said. “So if we end up with an overwhelming response on any day, we won’t be closing the door, we’ll be trying to serve everybody and give them some of their peace of mind and solutions to their problems.”

The Thompson Nicola Regional District has opened a resiliency centre in Kamloops to support wildfire evacuees. It’s a one-stop shop to help evacuees find answers to their questions, and to begin the process of filing insurance claims. #BCWildfirehttps://t.co/t3xyKKScLm pic.twitter.com/IbDN6gMWoD

— TNRD (@TNRD) July 22, 2021