A year after the Fort McMurray wildfire, lessons on how to deal with a large scale disaster are still being learned.

Business Coach Angela Groeneveld was one of the High River town employees who traveled north to use her experience, and expertise, in dealing with the High River flood, to help the victims of the wildfire.

She has an important piece of advice for everyone.

Uunderstand your insurance policies before you need them.

"We really need to get a hold of and understand our insurance policies," said Groeneveld.

And she added insurance companies need to be held accountable to delivering settlements within a reasonable timeline.

Groeneveld said when you see people a year later, still in mitigation over their insurance claim, it's just a shame.

"That is the biggest hold back for recovery in my opinion."

And the more people understand their insurance policy, before it's needed, the better it is for victims when trying to figure out how to handle things like fires and floods.

"I don't know if they (the government) can play a role, in mandating timelines, there has to be something they can do to protect our people."

A good majority of the businesses in Fort McMurray are open again, while a few chose to shut down.

Insurance and The Red Cross, who put out $30 million to help businesses, has helped a lot of small business owners get back on track.  

"Those businesses up there have been given a lot of opportunity to get up and running."

On the other hand about 12,000 people have left the community and that's hurting business too.

"What we discovered up there, was Fort McMurray was hit with two disasters. They had a man-made disaster before their natural disaster hit. So you are trying to define is this because of the oil bust, or because of the fire."

And for some businesses, as the insurance claims were honoured, they were able to move a lot of product to people who needed to replace everything.

"It's a new landscape up there and a new way of doing business."

Groeneveld says dealing first with the flood, then the fire, she wouldn't have wanted to be anywhere else.

But it was a big workload, while working on stage three recovery in High River, she was also working on phase one in Fort McMurray.

"When you have experienced something like that your heart just pulls at you, and you want to pay it forward. I am going to take a break for awhile. It can mentally take a toll on you and the biggest thing I can pay forward right now is to make sure you are doing self-care when you are working in a disaster that is very important."