Officials fear wildfire in Alberta will double in size

Associated Press

LAC LA BICHE, Alberta

Canadian officials hoped to complete the mass evacuation of work camps north of Alberta’s main oil-sands city of Fort McMurray on Saturday, fearing a growing wildfire could double in size and reach a major oil-sands mine and even the neighboring province of Saskatchewan.

Chad Morrison of Alberta Wildfire said the massive blaze in the province covered more than 385,476 acres and could be 741,300 acres by the end of Saturday because of high temperatures, dry conditions and high winds. Morrison expects to be fighting the fire in the forested areas for months.

“In no way is this fire under control,” Alberta Premier Rachel Notley said.

Thousands of displaced residents were getting a sobering drive-by view of some of the burned-out neighborhoods as convoys continued Saturday. The images were largely ones of devastation – scorched trucks, charred homes and telephone poles, burned out from the bottom up, hanging in the wires like little wooden crosses. No deaths or injuries were reported.

Notley said about 12,000 evacuees have been airlifted from oil-sands mine air fields over the past two days, and about 7,000 have been evacuated in police-escorted highway convoys. She said the goal was to complete the evacuation of evacuees from northern work camps by late Saturday.

Officials said the fire could burn to the edges of the Suncor oil-sands facility, about 15 miles north of Fort McMurray. Nonessential staff have been evacuating, and efforts to protect the site were underway.

“This facility, it should be emphasized, is highly resilient to forest fires as we have seen in the past when it’s previously been threatened by very large fires,” Notley said.

Oil-sands mines are resilient to fires because they are cleared and have no vegetation, said Morrison. He said the sites also have very good industrial-fire departments, and that the fire wasn’t expected to reach the oil-sands mines north of Suncor.

The fire and mass evacuation has forced a quarter or more of Canada’s oil output offline and was expected to impact an economy already hurt by the fall in the price of oil. The Alberta oil sands have the third-largest reserves of oil in the world behind Saudi Arabia and Venezuela. Its workers largely live in Fort McMurray where some neighborhoods have been destroyed.

More than 80,000 people have left Fort McMurray, where the fire has torched 1,600 homes and other buildings. Gas has been turned off, the power grid is damaged and water is not drinkable. Officials said there is no time line to return residents to the city, but the Alberta government has begun preliminary planning, though it stresses fighting the fire is still the first priority.