'I feel blessed': Fort McMurray mom thankful for home-coming

As Robyn Keats stepped inside her Timberlea home for the first time since the frenzied evacuation from Fort McMurray nearly a month ago, it was as if time stood still.

Keats and her family fled Fort McMurray, when a wildfire so powerful it was tagged"The Beast" forced more than 90,000 residents in the northern Alberta community to flee for their lives.

On Wednesday as the mandatory evacuation orders were lifted for residents in the downtown, Keats broke the re-entry guidelines, and returned to her home in the north-end neighbourhood of Timberlea a day early.

"Coming down it was really bad to look into Waterways. It was like devastation. And we both had our little cry," said Keats, a stay-at-home mom.

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As she snaked her way through the eerily quiet streets of her neighbourhoodwith her six-year-old son Simon in the back seat, Keats feared her home would be blanketed with suffocating ash and dust.

But that fear was soon replaced with a flood of relief.

"It was like a time capsule. Our bread wasn't moldy, our furnace filter was clean. And we're home."

"I went in, and I didn't even have dust. It was just like time was frozen still."

And although the house was pristine, completely unscathed by the fire, Keats admits that the raw chicken she left in the kitchen was a far less inviting part of her home-coming.

Like so many others who lost electricity to their homes throughout the disaster, her fridge has turned into a putrid mess.

"That is nasty. You don't know what food is there, and it's like a guessing game. You see it and it's all green and yellow."

After scrubbing down the house, she made her way to Wal-mart where she was picking out new shoes for Simon, who seems to be adjusting well to life back in a city largely unrecognizable from the one he left just a few weeks ago.

"I wanted to come back," he said."But I would like to play outside."

Even so, Keats says the first sight of the cityand the neighbourhoods reduced to ashes remains a gut-wrenching reminder of what her family could have lost in the fire.

"When I see that, I feel blessed because I still have my kid and I still got to go home."

And even through tears, Keats smiles as she talks about how Fort McMurray can rebuild, and move forward after the fire.

"You have to be there to help your friends that you know havelost everything, and you look at the positives.

"Instead of coming into town, looking at Centennial Park that's gone, look at Gregoire."

"Coming down the hill, you have Waterways and Beaconhill that are gone, but look at the fresh grass, look at the re-growth.

"That's all you can do, is keep positive."