Starting Friday, pick up hours will be from 8 AM to 8 PM through next Thursday.
Advertisement
Airlines are also gearing up for increased demand as oil companies use more fly-in-fly-out workers, though flight plans can not be set until oil companies know where their workers will be located, said Darcy Morgan, chief commercial officer with charter operator Enerjet Ltd.
The move to provide cash directly to those affected by the evacuation was applauded by a group that had urged people to donate to local charities overshadowed by the Red Cross.
Line 18 carries crude from Enbridge’s Cheecham terminal 380 kilometers (236 miles) south to the regional crude trading hub of Edmonton.
You are eligible to receive the funding if you were forced to leave the Fort McMurray area because of wildfire and were unable to return home for a minimum of seven days because of an evacuation order, an imminent health and safety threat (such as extreme air quality advisories or lack of water or power), or a lack of reasonable transportation options to return home.
Royal Dutch Shell P.L.C. became the first company to resume its operation in the center of Canada’s oil sands region. The Suncor plant can produce up to 350,000 bpd.
Syncrude, controlled by Suncor Energy Inc., restarted power generation at its oil sands mine in Aurora, north of the city, on Tuesday as it began planning to resume operations. The site has a total capacity of around 315,000 bpd. A handful of smaller facilities remained under fire threat, however, and some could not yet be reached for damage assessments. There are still fire threats in certain areas.
The size of the fire was little changed on Wednesday at roughly 229,000 hectares (566,000 acres) and moving away from the community.
The provincial government opened up a second distribution centre to hand out debit cards to Fort McMurray evacuees, hoping to ease some of the long lines that emerged on the first day.
Those with intact homes have pressed to return much sooner.
Ontario will contribute $500,000 to the Canadian Red Cross to help its relief efforts for people displaced by the wildfires in Alberta.
This is the most important cash transfer weve done in our history and the fastest one, said Red Cross CEO and president Conrad Sauvé.
It rained Sunday. The Rural Municipality of Wood Buffalo, which includes Fort McMurray, tweeted a picture of the rainfall and wrote: “It was only for a few minutes but the sight of rain has never been so good”. The mood was sombre and defiant.
Advertisement
“I’ll be honest, I need a break, and I’m going to spend time with my family and we’re going to hug a lot and I’ll have a couple of beers”, he said.
