Anyone wanting to lend a helping hand to assist the wildfire evacuees in Prince George will finally get a chance.

The City of Prince George will open a volunteer centre to recruit, train and deploy volunteers Thursday morning at 8 am.

Senior Communications Officer Mike Kellett says they’re responding to the overwhelming response from the public.

“We have really been hearing from the community and the residents of Prince George that they want to help in a major way and the City of Prince George quickly put this together and it’s going to be managed by Volunteer PG.”

With more evacuees possibly on the way, additional bodies will be required Kellett says. “What we understand Is that for any emergency situation you only expand to meet the needs of the day essentially. What we’re doing is reacting to what’s going on and we’re going to need some more folks. We took the first few days to see how things have been going and identified some priority areas that we may need to backfill.”

Volunteer PG will also manage the reception centre at the PG Conference and Civic Centre.

As of last night, the total number of evacuees who have registered at the Emergency Reception Centre at CNC was 3,285.

This includes 2,561 adults and 724 children.

Thus far, the City has distributed about $222,000 in grocery vouchers.

A link to the City of Prince George Facebook page can be found here