(CNN)
The massive wildfire that forced almost 90,000 people to evacuate in
Alberta is growing and approaching the neighboring province of
Saskatchewan, Canadian officials said Saturday.
Smoke fills the air as a police
officer stands guard at a roadblock along Highway 63 leading into Fort
McMurray on May 8, 2016, near Fort McMurray, Alberta, Canada.
FORT MCMURRAY, Alberta - The images are ones of devastation - scorched homes, virtually whole neighborhoods burned to the ground. It rained a little Sunday morning in Fort McMurray, but Canadian officials say they expect to fight the massive wildfire that has destroyed large parts of Alberta's oil sands town for months.
There's
fear the growing wildfire could get much larger and reach a major oil
sands mine and even cross into the neighboring province of Saskatchewan.
"We
still expect this fire to more than double in size because of the high
temperatures, strong winds and low humidities," Alberta wildfire
protection manager Chad Morrison said.
The Alberta government said the massive blaze in the province will cover more than 495,000 acres by Sunday and continue to grow because of high temperatures, dry conditions and high winds.
Home
foundations and the skeletons of possessions are all that remain in
parts of a residential neighborhood destroyed by a wildfire on May 7,
2016 in Fort McMurray, Canada.
Scott Olson/Getty Images
Morrison said it's not uncommon to fight such an inferno in forested areas for months.
Morrison
said the fire was burning away from communities this weekend. He
expected cooler temperatures along with the rain Sunday, but significant
rainfall is needed to put out the flames.
The Rural Municipality of Wood Buffalo, which includes Fort McMurray, tweeted a picture of the rainfall. Alberta Premier Rachel Notley retweeted the picture and wrote "Here's hoping for much more!"
Officials had hoped to complete the mass evacuation of work camps
north of Fort McMurray on Saturday. Thousands of displaced residents got
a drive-by view of some of the burned-out neighborhoods as convoys
continued. No deaths or injuries have been reported since the fire
started last Sunday.
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 left in highway convoys escorted by police. She said
the goal was to complete the evacuation from northern work camps by
Sunday.
"I've met more heroes in this experience than I've ever
thought existed," an emotional fire captain Adam Bugden said after
returning from the front lines.
The fire could reach the edges of
the Suncor oil sands facility, about 15 miles north of Fort McMurray.
Non-essential staff have been evacuating and efforts to protect the site
were under way.
Notley, however, said that the facility was
highly resilient to forest fires. Oil sands mines are cleared and have
no vegetation.
Morrison said 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.
Police said many parts of
smoke-filled Fort McMurray are burnt and visibility is low. Officers
wore masks as they checked homes to make sure everyone was out.
More
than 80,000 people have left Fort McMurray in the heart of Canada' oil
sands, 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 timeline 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.
About
25,000 evacuees moved north in the hours after Tuesday's mandatory
evacuation, where oil sands work camps that usually house employees were
used to house evacuees. Officials are moving everyone south where it is
safer. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau had no immediate plans to
visit the region. "We don't want to distract from the important work
right now," Kate Purchase, a spokeswoman for Trudeau said.
Syncrude,
a major oil sands mining company, also shut down operations and
evacuated. The company said in a statement that while there is no
imminent threat from fire, smoke has reached its Mildred Lake site.
The
494,211 acres size estimate for the fire includes burned areas and
those areas still in flames. The fire started last Sunday and has
destroyed about than 772 miles of northern Alberta forest.
Lac La
Biche, Alberta, normally a sleepy town of 2,500 about 109 miles south of
Fort McMurray, was helping thousands of evacuees, providing a place to
sleep, food, donated clothes and even shelter for their pets.
Jihad
Moghrabi, a spokesman for Lac La Biche County, said that 4,400 evacuees
have come through The Bold Center, a sports facility in town. At the
center, tables were piled with clothes, towels and other items. The
center was offering three free meals a day and other services, including
mental health services. A kennel housed people's pets on site.
Nicole
Cormier, a photographer from Fort McMurray, is staying with family in
Lac La Biche but brings neighbors that she evacuated with her to the
center every day for services.
She showed cellphone photos she
shot from her backyard of the advancing fire, and photos of flames on
the side of the road while they were evacuating.
Cormier said she
checks the security doorbell camera on her house several times a day
just to see if it's standing. For now, it is.
"It's weird, you feel a big sigh of relief but you feel totally guilty because of what others have lost," she said.
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