About 8,000 workers at oil camps north of Fort McMurray were ordered to evacuate late Monday.
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In Dickinsfield, officials said there was an explosion in a home on McConachie Crescent – damaging seven homes.
“Alberta Health Services has recommended that members of the public who had been previously arranging to return to the area under various requests not return until those conditions improve”, Notley said at a news conference in Edmonton.
The sudden movement of the fire prompted the evacuation of some 4,000 people from work camps outside Fort McMurray, with all northbound traffic again cut off at the city, the Regional Municipality of Wood Buffalo said on Monday.
The fire was said to be moving at 100-130 feet per minute in that area.
And the Athabasca Oil Sands are mostly south of Fort McMurray.
Suncor issued a news release saying “Suncor has enhanced fire mitigation and protection around all of its facilities”. He said the company is now operating at reduced rates, continues to ramp back up to full capacity of 255,000 bpd, but would evacuate if the fire approached or if air quality worsened.
The fire has grown to about 35-hundred and 50 square kilometres and officials say the focus is now on protecting other work camps.
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.
About 2,400 structures in Fort McMurray were destroyed by the wildfire, including 1,600 homes.
The wildfire, which destroyed whole sections of Fort McMurray earlier this month, is also expected to reach the neighbouring province of Saskatchewan.
A massive wildfire burning around the oil sands hub of Fort McMurray, Alberta, is about 1 km (1,094 yards) away from Enbridge Inc’s Cheecham crude oil tank farm, but is under control for now, emergency officials said on Monday.
“It’s bad but it’s not as bad for us as I think people think, ” said George.
The company will restart operations only when it is safe to do so, it said.
While that’s a “significant hit” to a province already reeling from the global slump in oil prices, the board said it expects the quarterly loss to be fully recovered by a similar amount in the third quarter – assuming oilsands production resumes fairly quickly. Pedro Antunes, the executive director of Economic Outlook and Analysis and deputy chief economist for the Conference Board of Canada said while the emotional impact for residents is obviously high, the overall economic impact will be minimal.
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Air quality in the north due to smoke remains at more than three times the acceptable levels, posing a risk to firefighters and delaying both repairs to damaged Fort McMurray infrastructure and the eventual return of tens of thousands of residents.
