BRAMPTON, Ont. -- Before fleeing the flames in Fort McMurray, Angie Fougere thought the best thing to do was grab important documents, family photos and the custom-made jewelry she received as a child.
The 27-year-old and her younger brother, Craig, then loaded more items into their two pickup trucks, including his treasured accordion and their bikes and snowboards, until nothing else would fit.
They made it safely out of their burning neighbourhood only to have the vehicles -- and everything inside them -- stolen in Saskatoon.
"You don't realize what you have until you go to reach for it and it's not there. And then you think, 'Oh my God, that was in the truck, too,"' Fougere said Friday from Brampton, Ont.
She and her brother were among more than 80,000 residents evacuated from Fort McMurray after a massive wildfire spread into the community on May 3.
Last weekend, after the siblings spent 10 days with a friend in Edmonton, they decided to head east to stay with relatives.
Their first pit stop was Saskatoon.
Fougere said they checked into a Comfort Inn off the highway and parked outside; the contents of the trucks were hidden under locked covers. In the morning, while walking her tiny dog, Simba, she realized the vehicles were gone.
She went to the office and asked if their trucks had been towed. They hadn't.
"I said, 'I gotta go check the parking lot again because I think I'm dreaming," she said.
After reporting the theft to police, Fougere and her brother booked a flight to Ontario.
They plan to wait it out there until it's safe to return to Fort McMurray, and they have jobs to go back to, Fougere added. The pair work for Suncor, which has ceased operations as the fire continues to burn in the region.
It's a shame thieves would target evacuees, said Fougere.
"They saw the plates on the back saying Alberta," she said. "They knew."
Fougere knows many other Fort McMurray residents have lost more than she has. The blaze destroyed about 2,400 buildings, roughly 10 per cent of the community.
Luckily, the home she shares with her brother is still standing. They were recently able to see the house on an online mapping site set up by the Alberta government.
"The silver lining is we still have our home -- and there's things in it," Fougere said.
-- By Chris Purdy in Edmonton
