When John Bino learned that a wildfire was closing in on his home in Fort McMurray's Abasand neighbourhood on May 3, 2016, he was at work — one and a half hours away.

He called home and told his wife, Jenny Solidum, to gather their two young boys and go to a friend's place in nearby Timberlea. In the meantime, Bino would drive back to the house to retrieve his 76-year-old mother, who was visiting from India. She was a polio survivor and too heavy for his wife to lift.

But by the time he arrived at home, police had barricaded the road. Bino pleaded with them to let him through.

"I said, 'My mom, she's handicapped, she cannot move. She doesn't speak the language. She's stuck. She has no idea what's happening. We need to rescue her and the door is locked.'"

Police assured him his mother would be rescued and told him to go. Bino waited hours at a nearby evacuation centre. But Solidum kept calling him, in a panic, as the fire approached Timberlea.

"I had to make a decision, right? To take care of my wife and kids or to take care of my mom." Bino decided to rejoin his family. But as they fled north from evacuation centre to evacuation centre and eventually onto a flight to Calgary, Bino made frantic phone calls to 911 and the Red Cross. No one knew anything about his mother's whereabouts.

Bino tried not to dwell on reports that Abasand was burning. "The only thing I'm thinking is my mama burning alive, and she'll be crying out my name."

Two days after being forced to abandon his home, Bino got a surprise phone call. A doctor at Leduc Community Hospital, just outside Edmonton, asked if he knew someone named Salimma Michael, who had been airlifted to safety.

"I was so relieved, my knees were shaking," Bino said. The family rushed to Edmonton, and arrived at the hospital to visit Michael the next morning.

When Bino and Solidum bought the house in Abasand back in 2014, they loved the fact that the neighbourhood was on a hill surrounded by forest. "The trails were great. And it was peaceful and quiet," Bino said. "No one ever mentioned [anything] about forest fires being a risk."