Alberta declared a state of emergency Wednesday as crews frantically held back wind-whipped wildfires that had already torched 1,600 homes and other buildings in Canada's main oil sands city of Fort McMurray, forcing over 80,000 residents to flee. ( AP
Canada on Friday was expected to relocate thousands of people for a second time as the raging wildfire engulfing the Canadian city of Fort McMurray showed no signs of subsiding.
In total as many as 25,000 people may be airlifted from camps north of the embattled area where they initially fled to seek refuge at oil sands work camps. As the fire, whipped by 25 mph winds, continued to grow, officials scrambled to organize a massive airlift for them to safer terrain more than a hundred miles south of Fort McMurray.
Some 8,000 people were airlifted to safety on Thursday.
Alberta, meanwhile, declared a state of emergency as it sought to cope with the rampaging wildfire and impose a wider mandatory evacuation area.
“Our focus right now is on getting those people south as quickly as possible,” said Alberta Premier Rachel Notley.
The work camps had seemed like a natural safe place for thousands of people rushing out of the city. Fort McMurray is surrounded by vast forests in the heart of Canada’s oil sands, which represent the third largest reserves of oil in the world after Saudi Arabia and Venezuela.
Update 2: Fort McMurray Wildfire (May 5 at 10 a.m.):
https://t.co/T0DqsisDfJ#y...itter.com/2LqYWmYo4R — Rachel Notley (@RachelNotley) May 5, 2016
Meanwhile, other evacuees who first fled to three suburbs 30 miles south of the city Tuesday and Wednesday were bundled onto buses shortly after midnight Thursday by Royal Canadian Mounted Police who went door-to-door to warn of the spreading wildfire. Many were transported 180 miles farther south to the town of Lac La Biche.
Notley said the blaze so far has destroyed or damaged 1,600 buildings and homes in Fort McMurray. She flew over the area and tweeted photos of the fire, which grew to 85,000-hectares, or 330 square miles, on Thursday. “The view from the air is heartbreaking,” she wrote.
Read more at:
http://www.usatoday.com/s...d-evacuees/83960660/