A police officer works a road block on Highway 63 near Fort McMurray, Alberta, on Friday.
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“Our goal is to have everyone evacuated to the south by the end of the day today, ‘” Alberta Premier Rachel Notley said at a press conference Saturday.
According to the CBC, at least 80,000 residents have been successfully evacuated from Fort McMurray, where the fire has destroyed at least 1,600 homes and buildings, and where smoke has at times reduced visibility to as little as 10 meters.
“The city is in the heart of Canada’s oil country and as much as a quarter of the country’s oil production has been halted by the fire”.
The Alberta provincial government, which declared a state of emergency, said yesterday the size of the blaze had grown to 101,000ha, or about 1000sq km.
Officials ordered 80,000 residents to evacuate ahead of the fire and so far, not a single direct fatality has been reported.
Firefighting resources that have already deployed include 22 air tankers, 138 pieces of heavy equipment, and over 1,100 firefighters.
“Right now, we really do need some rain, there is no question about it”, said Chad Morrison, senior manager with Alberta Wildfire Prevention. “This fire will continue to burn for a very long time until we see some significant rain”.
“We were working overtime and I just saw what looked like a massive cloud in the sky, but I knew it was fire”, he said.
“Weather forecasters predict a 40% chance of rain this coming Sunday, which may help to slow the fire’s spread”.
Fire officials in Alberta, Canada say a raging wildfire could double in size by the weekend. Morrison said cooler weather was expected Sunday and Monday.
The Alberta government expects to complete moving people through Fort McMurray on Saturday to the south side of a massive and growing wildfire that is threatening the city.
The warning came from officials who have been desperately organising evacuation convoys away from fire-ravaged Fort McMurray.
Alberta’s government crisis cell cautioned that fire conditions remained extreme in the province due to low humidity, high temperatures and gusty winds.
However, two young girls died in a road accident in the middle of the week when their vehicle was caught in the flood of people fleeing Fort McMurray.
Lac La Biche, normally a sleepy town of 2,500, is helping about 12,000 evacuees, providing a place to sleep, food, donated clothes and even shelter for their pets.
Federal Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale echoed Notley’s concerns Saturday, calling the wildfire “unpredictable and dangerous” as flames feed off “extremely dry” boreal forest.
Smoke billows from the Fort McMurray wildfires as a truck drives down the highway in Kinosis, Alberta, Canada, May 5, 2016. (Donation information can be found here.) numerous evacuees have sought refuge by heading to the city of Edmonton in the south, travelling in large convoys past the fire and the many devastated neighborhoods.
Oil companies crucial to the region such as Suncor, Syncrude and Shell have pulled out non-essential employees, and analysts said all three had slashed output by a total of 1 million barrels a day.
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About half of Canada’s oil sands production capacity has been taken offline by the conflagration, according to a Reuters estimate.
