Wood Buffalo RCMP are investigating reports of arson after fires were set at several homes in Fort McMurray’s downtown area overnight on Friday, Sept. 18. Residents discovered burned personal property the next morning, including a rocking chair belonging to Alana Mouland, who lives with her teenage son.

Mouland said the evening had seemed ordinary. She and her son prepared dinner, then went to bed at about midnight. Before turning in, she checked the back door, locked up and turned off the lights. “Everything was okay,” Mouland told Postmedia, “until, she said, it wasn’t.”

She said she woke at about 10:30 a.m. Saturday and went outside through the back door. “I got up the next morning around 10:30 a.m., came out my back door, and found that my chair was burned,” Mouland recalled. She is among residents who found personal belongings burned to ash that morning.

After Mouland reported the damage to police, she was told that two other houses on Alberta Drive, about a street away, had also been hit by fires during the night. Wood Buffalo RCMP Cpl. Natasha Lytwenko told Postmedia that officers responded to reports of arson in the downtown area on Saturday morning.

For Mouland, the damage was limited to a rocking chair, and she said she was grateful it was not worse. “I’m glad it wasn’t worse than that. If anything was wrongly exposed there, that could have been lives,” she said. Police have not confirmed the extent of the damage from Saturday’s fires, and have released no details about suspects or charges.

Mouland described the fires as part of a wider pattern of concerns for her family living downtown. She recalled strangers staying overnight in her backyard and said her children’s bicycles had been stolen after they were left outside. “We get a lot of foot traffic around here; my kids have left their bikes out overnight, and woke up to find them stolen, but it’s never been to this extent.”

In an earlier interview with Postmedia, RCMP said property crime had been one of the region’s major concerns. The downtown area had also seen a period of criminal activity in the months before the fires, according to the report. The current investigation is ongoing, with police yet to provide further information about damage, suspects or charges.

Based on reporting by Edmonton Journal.