Ms Notley added that it is still not safe for residents to enter the city without an escort.
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The gas in Fort McMurray has been turned off and the power grid is damaged, while the water is not drinkable.
New aerial footage has emerged showing the extent of destruction by the wildfire in the Canadian town of Fort McMurray.
(Jeff McIntosh/The Canadian Press via AP). Bebie Hortaleza, who has opened up her home for Fort McMurray wildfire evacuees, sings at the Word of Faith Family Church in Lac la Biche, Canada, Sunday, May 8, 2016.
Tens of thousands of residents in and around Fort McMurray, home to Canada’s oil sands, had to be evacuated last week as the fire razed homes and businesses. Officials said today that a “days-long rain” could completely put out the fire, but unfortunately, there is no forecast of rain at the moment.
The fire and mass evacuation has forced as much of a third of Canada’s oil output offline and was expected to impact an economy already hurt by the fall in oil prices. The wildfire has damaged the large parts of Alberta’s oil sands.
Notley said it would be at least two weeks before any kind of schedule could be drawn up for residents to start to return and many more weeks before Fort McMurray could be considered safe.
Notley acknowledged, “It was quite overwhelming in some spots”.
A burned auto rests in the garage of a destroyed home Monday in the Beacon Hill neighborhood of Fort McMurray, Alberta.
On Monday, officials said there were two new fires started.
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. That includes areas already burned and now burning. Analysts at Goldman Sachs estimated the wildfire has reduced Canada’s oil sands production by a million barrels per day, but said in a note the lack of damage to the oil mines could allow for a fast ramp up in production. “It is a home you will return to”. What state it is in we don’t know or when we will get back.
“There is an economic effect to taking production offline”, she said Tuesday after a meeting with oil company executives.
“The shortest ones will be 24 to 48 hours before they are operating”.
When Cenovus Energy Inc. and Canadian Natural Resources Ltd. were forced to shut down past year due to wildfires, it took more two weeks for them to resume operations once the area was declared safe, noted Jackie Forrest, a Calgary-based energy economist with Arc Financial Corp.
Fort McMurray Fire Chief Darby Allen told reporters on the bus tour that firefighters “gave it their all” and that he believes much more of the town would have been lost without their heroic efforts.
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The fire is now headed eastward, away from Fort McMurray toward the border with the Province of Saskatchewan, he said.
