Provincial government still working on compensating wildfire evacuee hosts | iNFOnews | Thompson-Okanagan's News Source
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Provincial government still working on compensating wildfire evacuee hosts

A photograph of the June wildfire on the Dew Drop Trail near Kamloops.
Image Credit: FILE PHOTO

After stepping up to help out during the province's worst wildfire season on record, those who hosted evacuees are finally starting to be compensated.

If you were one of those people and you're still waiting, Emergency Management B.C. says pay should be just around the corner.

Thousands of people were evacuated from their homes during the summer due to nearby wildfires, and temporarily lived in either hotels, the homes of family, or the homes of strangers for sometimes weeks.

Emergency Management B.C. estimates that approximately 8,000 to 8,500 billet invoices were filed after the wildfire season, and they're getting closer to processing all of them.

"We estimate that 6,000 claims have been processed so far and that approximately 2,000 to 2,500 remain to be processed," according to Emergency Management B.C.

All emergency social services payments for the wildfire season, including billet payments, have been approximately 10 to 12 weeks.

Emergency Management B.C. says the turn around time is largely due to the scope and scale of the event, which resulted in more evacuations than at any other time in the province's history.


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