All 80,000 residents of the northern Alberta city of Fort McMurray have been ordered to evacuate due to a raging wildfire.
Photo via Instagram (peter_ndp)

By: Cam Fortems, KTW

When Brenda Prevost’s daughter and son-in-law left their house in Fort McMurray Tuesday morning — leaving their son with a babysitter for the day — the nearby wildfire didn’t seem an immediate threat.

Within hours, however, her daughter, Melissa, was fleeing the Suncor Energy plant an hour away to get back to Fort McMurray after officials called for the evacuation of the northern Alberta city of 80,000.

While the family is safe, Prevost said they are under no illusions about the fate of their house in the Abasand area of Fort McMurray. Prevost, the executive director of Centre for Seniors Information in Kamloops spent the night communicating with her family.

“She sent me video of the subdivision when they’re going down the highway and it’s a wall of fire . . . We’re quite sure there’s nothing there.”

Because the couple was at work Tuesday, they had no opportunity to get anything out of the the home they have lived in for about eight years. The babysitter and Prevost’s grandson were moved to an evacuation centre, where the toddler was later reunited with his mother.

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At a camp about an hour north of Fort McMurray, Kamloops resident Ryan Saucier spent the night sleeping on the floor to make room for a few of the tens of thousands of people evacuated from the city. The electrician is staying at McClelland Lake, which has rooms for about 2,000 people.

Kamloops is considered a hub for fly-in, fly-out workers who commute to Northern Alberta. Although that number has declined significantly since the oil price crash, there are still workers going north.

Venture Kamloops does not compile statistics on these workers.

Saucier is waiting to get shipped out early so more space can be made available for evacuees. He said they are in good spirits.

“I thought it would be a lot worse… . I thought we’d see a lot of emotional people,” he said.

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As of Wednesday, Prevost’s family was split up: her son-in-law evacuated to a camp in the north, while her daughter managed to borrow a car from a neighbour who was at the shelter so she could flee south to Athabasca, where she and her son are staying with friends.

“They were both at work ,so they’ve got nothing other than what they had on them,” Prevost said.

As of Wednesday, the wildfire had torched 1,600 structures in Fort McMurray and was ready to renew its attack in another day of scorching heat and capricious winds.

There have been no reports of injuries or deaths, but the wildfire is still out of control.

Scott Long with Alberta Emergency Management said crews were doing their best, but admitted Wednesday: “It is a possibility that we may lose a large portion of the town.”

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Fort McMurray Mayor Melissa Blake said the city has been “fighting an uphill battle for a long time” due to its extreme rate of growth fuelled by oilsands development, so citizens are ready for what lies ahead.

“We will hope to follow in the shadow of Slave Lake in our perseverance and resolve,” Blake said. “And as we look to the future, this is still a place of incredible strength, resiliency and vibrancy. We’ll come back some day.”

The wildfire roared into the southwest corner of the city Tuesday afternoon. It engulfed homes in three subdivisions and destroyed vehicles, gas stations and a motel. The Beacon Hill suburb in the south end had the worst damage, with about 80 per cent of homes destroyed.

“This is a nasty, dirty fire,” Fort McMurray Fire Chief Darby Allen said. “There are certainly areas of the city that have not been burned, but this fire will look for them and it will find them and it will want to take them,”

A bumper-to-bumper gridlock exodus continued on Highway 63, the main artery south.

“There’s a lot of vehicles on the side of the road,” said RCMP Sgt. John Spaans of Boyle, a small town about two-thirds of the way from the oilsands capital to Edmonton.

“It’s tough to say if these people have broken down and pulled over, run out of gas or simply parked and camped. But there are a lot of vehicles that are in the ditches, medians, along the shoulders.”

Fire refugees were recounting tales of narrow escapes.

Shawn Brett said he was at home when his friends called him and urging him to leave. Brett said when he opened the door of his house, smoke and flames were all around the neighbourhood, so he jumped on his Harley-Davidson motorcycle and made his way through a traffic jam out of the city.

“I didn’t have time for nothing. I literally drove through the flames. I had ashes hitting my face and the heat from the fire was that bad,” he said. “Everything was jammed. It was nothing but the biggest chaos I’d ever seen.”

Alberta Premier Rachel Notley said up to 20,000 evacuees have fled north to stay at oilsands industrial camps.

Another 35,000 were streaming south to the communities of Anzac, Lac La Biche and Edmonton. Some were going as far as Calgary.

In Ottawa, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said the federal government will provide all possible assistance to Alberta. The prime minister said he had already spoken to Notley to offer his government’s “total support.”

Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan, in a conference call from Germany, said a formal request for assistance has been received from the Alberta government.

B.C. keeping wildfire crews at home for now

The B.C. Wildfire Service is providing pumps and hoses to Alberta fire crews battling the forest fire threatening Fort McMurray, but aircraft and other equipment are busy with wildfires in northeast B.C.

Forests Minister Steve Thomson said Wednesday there are seven significant wildfires burning in the Peace region, with one burning six kilometres from the northern Alberta border. The Siphon Creek fire covered an estimated 9,000 hectares by Wednesday, with an evacuation alert in effect for the nearby Doig River First Nation community.

Thomson said B.C. crews will continue working on that fire even if it crosses into Alberta, to allow their fire crews to focus on the Fort MacMurray situation. Other provinces that don’t have their own fire demands are being called on to assist Alberta.

The B.C. Wildfire Service has four evacuation alerts in effect in the Peace region, including one for the Beaton Airport Road fire north of Fort St. John. That fire is mostly contained at an estimated size of 7,000 hectares.

Dry spring conditions with exposed dead grass have created hazardous conditions in northern Alberta and northeast B.C.

— with files from The Canadian Press and Black Press