Fort McMurray Wildfire: Canada Declares State Of Emergency
MEP: A state of emergency has been declared in Canada’s Fort McMurray after a wildfire forced over 88,000 residents to flee.
The huge wildfire also burned dozens of more buildings and forced the evacuation of the main oil sands city in the province of Alberta in Canada.
Hundreds of homes have already been consumed by the blaze with two deaths reported due to an accident during mass evacuation.
“Buses are being assembled,” local authorities said in a statement, adding they were “going door-to-door,” and urging people to “remain calm.” Six reception centers are currently operating within the province, the Government of Alberta said at a news conference.
Danielle Larivee, Alberta’s minister of municipal affairs, said the fire was actively burning in residential areas, with more than 250 firefighters battling the blaze.
An update from the Municipality of Wood Buffalo later in the evening indicated that the fire was continuing to claim homes and had destroyed a new school.
“There are areas of the city that have not been burned, but this fire will look for them, and it will find them, and it will try and take them,” said the chief of a local fire brigade.
City officials warning that the next 24 hours are critical, launching an urgent appeal to the population as firefighters said winds were fanning the flames in various parts of the city.
The mass exodus caused by the fire has been described as the largest evacuation in Alberta’s history, with one fatal traffic accident reported that killed two people on secondary highway 881, which has been designated for evacuees.
The fire has reportedly crossed the intersection of Highways 63 and 69, which means that evacuating traffic can no longer pass northbound or southbound.
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.
