Monday night, people from around Saskatchewan came together in Fox Valley to raise money for the families effect during the wildfires that hit southwest Saskatchewan earlier this month.

Sean Checkley, the mayor of Fox Valley, and volunteer firefighter with the Fox Valley Fire Department said that they wanted to hold the event to help out the families.

"We felt that it was important for us to help out the families," he said. "All of us had some personal connection with some family members that were involved in the injuries. It's important to stay together and become one when something happens because we are all one small community essentially."

Over 450 people came to the Fox Valley Curing Rink to have supper, participate in an auction to help raise money.

Checkley said that without the support of the community, they wouldn't have been able to pull it off.

"The community has helped out unbelievably," he said. "It has been a community effort because you can't pull off a supper of 450 plus people without the whole community being behind it."

Checkley said the event came to be when Kyle Bachmier, a volunteer firefighter with Fox Valley felt the need to do something for the families.

"Kyle thought after Keri Hudec [one of the organizers] and myself received a phone call that one of our friends had a family member injured in the Piapot fire, he wanted to do something to help support them and the fire departments."

Bachmier said it was amazing to see people from across the province come and support the families.

"It's amazing just to see all the people that have shown up, from Gull Lake, Abby, Maple Creek," he said. "It's not just bordering communities; it's communities from all around Saskatchewan that came out to support this."

Checkley added that the whole experience has been overwhelming and that he would call it a complete success.

The three families they raised money were the families of James Hargrave, who died while trying to put out the fire, the family of Eddie Riehl, who was injured in the same crash that took James Hargrave's life, and family of Ron and Evan Wedrick, the father and son who were fighting fires near Tompkins when they suffered severe burns.