The head of Fort McMurray’s food bank says she is bracing for a flood of new clients once residents forced to flee devastating wildfires are allowed to return to the city.

The food bank is preparing double the number of hampers it would normally distribute, Arianna Johnson, Wood Buffalo Food Bank Executive Director told BNN. “We are hoping not to see that 100 per cent increase, but we are preparing for it,” she says.

The Fort McMurray Food bank was already stretched thin even before the wildfires that forced the evacuation of the town’s 80,000 residents. The crash in crude oil prices has created a spike in unemployment that has resulted in a 72 per cent increase in food bank use in 2015, says Johnson.  The wildfire will make that situation worse, she says. “The situation really started to escalate throughout the year,” says Johnson. “When we do return here, it will escalate even more.”

Even after the evacuation food bank workers and volunteers have been trying to service residents that have been forced to flee, says Johnson. Those workers have remained on the job while dealing with their own losses from the fire, she says.

There has been an outpouring of support from Canadians for Fort McMurray. The Red Cross has collected about $94-million in donations for the community. But Johnson worries about what will happen in long-term once attention from the fire has faded.  

In the meantime, neither the fire, nor recent economic challenges will extinguish Fort McMurray’s spark, says Johnson. “We are here, we are waiting and we are ready to go home.”

Johnson was featured in a BNN series of special reports on the challenges facing Fort McMurray. The report has been shortlisted for an award by the Radio-Television News Directors Association of Canada.