By Marcia Love
Losing your home and living in a motel room is difficult enough for residents to deal with following the flood, but moving a large family into one motel room can create an even bigger challenge.
That’s the situation Danny and Liza Guiao found themselves in when they were evacuated from their trailer at Maple Grove Motel on June 18.
The couple and their five children – aged seven to 19 – moved from a five-bedroom trailer to a single room at the Maple Creek Motor Inn.
Since moving to the motel, Liza said their lives have been anything but normal.
“It’s been crazy,” said Liza of their new living quarters. “We had a big kitchen and big living room (in our trailer). Now we live here with one room and seven people. It’s really, really hard.”
The Guiaos have been going to a friend’s house to use the kitchen to prepare meals each day.
“We’ve been going back and forth to cook and eat our meals,” Liza explained. “All my kids need to live in a real house.”
With some help from Cutting Edge, where Danny is employed, the family managed to find a rent-to-own fully-furnished, three-bedroom house in town which they will be moving into this week.
“Social services didn’t want us staying (in the trailer),” Liza said. “The owner of the trailer said maybe after a year they would have it fixed up, so we decided to find another house.”
The family is receiving support from social services for their motel costs, as well as assistance from the Provincial Disaster Assistance Program (PDAP).
Liza and her family moved to Maple Creek from the Philippines three years ago. Although flooding occurred in some areas of the Philippines, Liza said she never expected to see it happen here.
“I heard that Canada is a good place to live with no floods, so this was something to experience,” she said.