The Town of High River has created an account for local donations to fund grass root efforts and community groups in Fort McMurray. CAO and CFO Tom Maier says the town also hopes to help by lending expertise gained from the 2013 flood event. He says many people who were affected by the Slave Lake fire and were no longer with their municipality came to help our town during recovery, but that's not the case here.

"Where I think in our case we have a lot of the core people that are still here and have the knowledge base. We can go and really out help with Fort McMurray and getting them through the transition stage a lot quicker and hopefully eliminate some of the bumps and humps along the way."

Maier says the town's goal is to allow residents to directly contribute to recovery efforts.

"We feel that we can provide funds to maybe some of the social groups, some of the community groups, to Wood Buffalo the municipality itself in a more direct manner, so we've set up a local fund here."

He says the account is similar to the town's previous disaster relief fund.

"Primarily that is for local donations from High River. We didn't want to set up one that's broad-based because we don't want to step on the fundraising efforts that Fort McMurray or Wood Buffalo would be participating in or anything that's happening with the Red Cross."

Anyone wanting to donate to the Town of High River's relief fund is asked to contact town office directly.

Maier says Director of Emergency Management Carly Benson is currently working with task force in Fort McMurray, and today Manager of Family and Community Support Services Shelly Koot is heading up to aid Emergency Social Services.