Canadian wildfire forces more to evacuate
Print Edition
A WILDFIRE raging in the Canadian province of Alberta has moved south, forcing three more communities to evacuate and an emergency operations center to move again — taking it far from the devastated oil sands city of Fort McMurray.
Officials with the Rural Municipality of Wood Buffalo had been notified of changing weather patterns and weren’t taking chances, ordering the evacuation of Anzac, Gregoire Lake Estates and Fort McMurray First Nation, an aboriginal reservation.
The fire has already forced the evacuation of more than 80,000 people and torched 1,600 homes and other buildings in Fort McMurray. There was still no indication of injury or death from the fires. The province of Alberta declared a state of emergency.
“Homes have been destroyed. Neighborhoods have gone up in flames. The footage we’ve seen of cars racing down highways while fire races on all sides is nothing short of terrifying,” Prime Minister Justin Trudeau told parliament yesterday, calling it “the largest fire evacuation in Alberta’s history.”
Trudeau called on Canadians “to support our friends and neighbors at this difficult time,” saying the federal government will match individual charitable donations to the Red Cross.
Unseasonably hot temperatures combined with dry conditions have transformed the boreal forest in much of Alberta into a tinder box. Fort McMurray is surrounded by wilderness in the heart of Canada’s oil sands — the third largest reserves of oil in the world behind Saudi Arabia and Venezuela.
The emergency operations center relocated for the second time in a day and is now in Lac La Biche, Alberta — about 280 kilometers south of Fort McMurray. In the early hours yesterday, weary evacuees from Fort McMurray were on buses headed for Edmonton after being forced out of their temporary shelter in nearby Anzac.
They had arrived in Anzac on Tuesday after being evacuated from their homes 50 kilometers north in Fort McMurray.
There was some good news — Fort McMurray’s water treatment plant was saved, and Scott Long of Alberta Emergency said the downtown core was being held “through some Herculean efforts” of firefighters. Alberta Premier Rachel Notley flew up to survey the situation, and tweeted “heartbreaking” pictures of the fire from above. As high as her helicopter was, she said the plumes of smoke reached even higher.
About 10,000 evacuees moved north, where oil sands work camps were being pressed into service to house people. But most evacuees fled south.
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