On top of that, the process of restoring natural gas was dealt a setback when a home in an area that was getting service restored, blew up Monday night, destroying the house and damaging six others beside it.
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“I’d like to remind all Albertans that we have a fire ban across much of Alberta for a reason”.
Alas, the planning ground to a halt on Monday after a pair of explosions inflicted varying degrees of damage on 10 unburned homes in the neighbourhoods of Dickinsfield and Thickwood.
The plan to get some retail business owners into the city early to ready essentials like grocery stores and pharmacies is also on hold due to deteriorating air quality.
That’s about 10 per cent of the city.
In total, almost 100,000 people have fled the area around Fort McMurray, and the vast majority of regional oil company workers have not yet returned to their work camps. Most went north but some headed south.
The alert instructs all camps and production facilities to evacuate immediately, and for all evacuees to head south on Highway 63 “if possible”.
Notley also says two others, Noralta Lodge (3,700 rooms) and Birch Creek (360 rooms) are now evacuated and at risk.
She said the fire’s change of direction caught the company by surprise and will likely delay first production from the facility, which is expected to gradually ramp up to capacity of 35,000 barrels of bitumen a day from wells using steam to melt the heavy sticky oil and allow it to be pumped to surface.
Clarington firefighters are looking to help their own in Fort McMurray, Alberta.
Planes were available to evacuate workers again if necessary, he added.
“It’s bad but it’s not as bad for us as I think people think”, said George. “We’re hopeful that they won’t be threatened after today”.
On Tuesday morning, Notley confirmed the blaze destroyed a 655-unit work camp and was threatening two others.
On Monday, Suncor said it had ordered the evacuation of 8,000 workers from its oil sands camps in the Wood Buffalo municipality and shut down operations as authorities expanded the evacuation zone north of Fort McMurray, where the wildfires started over two weeks ago. Some companies started moving staff back to the region last week and Suncor stressed that there’s been no damage to any of its facilities.
The blaze, about 1 km (1,094 yards) away from the tank farm, was under control with the wind cooperating as the company’s industrial firefighters tackled the fire, officials said at a news conference. “When it is safe to do so, we will continue implementing our restart plans”.
Karen Grimsrud, Alberta’s chief medical officer of health, said they expect the air quality readings to remain in the extreme range for the next couple of days.
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“Westerly winds will push the fire closer to Syncrude and Suncor, but we expected very high resiliency with both those facilities” from firebreaks, Notley said at a news conference in the provincial capital of Edmonton.
