“There will be some dramatic images coming from media over the next couple of days”, Notley said.
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Much needs to be done before residents return, Notley said, including property damage assessments, and plans for re-entry, transportation, security and provisions of food and supplies.
Regional leaders and journalists got their first close-up look Monday at the cataclysmic landscape left behind by the raging wildfire in Alberta – and they saw hope.
For the first time since they were forced to leave their community behind amid a raging wildfire, the residents of Fort McMurray were able to get some of their pressing questions answered by Premier Rachel Notley and other officials.
“It was a miracle we got the entire population out safely”, she told reporters. “Our treatment plant is functioning”.
The last damage assessment estimated 1,600 structures, mostly homes, burned in the south and southwest areas of the city, 435 kilometres northeast of Edmonton.
Producer Syncrude, meanwhile, said it was calling on its Fort McMurray-based employees to not report to work unless a specific request is made, though it was reviewing its access options to restore operations.
“This is great firefighting weather”.
And staff are also setting up shop in evacuee reception centres and coffee shops to catch people wherever they may be.
“The city was surrounded by an ocean of fire only a few days ago”, she said. The prime minister thanked the countless firefighters who have been battling the wildfire that displaced more than 80,000 residents, and said he’d be visiting the city on Friday.
“We are now turning our minds more and more to the recovery effort”, Federal Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale said.
“We did our very best”, he said.
A burned-out barbecue and swing stand Monday in the Beacon Hill neighborhood of Fort McMurray, Alberta.
“They were already looking at weak prices from high storage in Alberta – high storage everywhere, really – and this is just, it’s not even the icing on the cake, it’s the icing on the icing on the cake in terms of bad prices”, King said in an interview.
Fire officials said the blaze was still large, growing and risky.
Authorities raised the number of structures reported lost in the half-million-acre inferno near Fort McMurray to 2,400, up by 50 percent from Sunday. Notley said there will be a meeting Tuesday with the energy industry to discuss the state of the facilities and the impact on operations.
Notley said oilsands facilities north of Fort McMurray were not damaged by the fire, and said production for many operators continued as before, but that wasn’t the case for companies closer to Fort McMurray.
To date there have only been two deaths linked to the fire.
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Emily Ryan, 15, and her stepmother’s nephew, Aaron Hodgson, died last Wednesday in a head-on crash fleeing the blaze.
