As authorities warn the blaze could double in size by the end of Saturday, more than 88,000 people have left wildfire-ravaged Fort McMurray in western Canada.

As flames and smoke continued to play havoc with efforts to get to safety, police and military oversaw the procession of hundreds of cars and a mass airlift of evacuees.

After the fires breached city limits, residents were ordered to evacuate on Tuesday. Spending the past three days stranded in oil sands work camps around 25,000 were directed north while most went south. The supplies of those who went North have their supplies dwindling as the wildfires grew tenfold.

Officials decided to move them south as they were wary of the fires’ unpredictable spread. In the south they could better access support services. The convoy took residents through the remains of their city where flames engulfed neighbourhoods and destroyed at least 1,600 homes and other buildings led by Royal Canadian Mounted Police cruisers and monitored overhead by helicopters.

Despite a one-hour interruption due to heavy smoke, authorities said that about 1,200 vehicles had passed through Fort McMurray by late afternoon on Friday.

With thousands of residents flown to Alberta’s major cities in a series of mass airlifts that began on Thursday, some of the evacuees stranded in the north were also evacuated by plane.

According to airport spokesman Chris Chodan, in Edmonton, between 4,500 and 5,000 evacuees arrived at the airport on at least 45 flights on Friday. In total, more than 300 flights have arrived with evacuees since Tuesday, he said.

Alberta remains in a state of emergency. A total of 49 wildfires across the province, with seven considered to be raging out of control, were being fought by more than 1,100 firefighters, 145 helicopters, 138 pieces of heavy equipment and 22 air tankers.

Firefighters were still working to save the city’s homes and businesses in Fort McMurray, the heart of Alberta’s oil sands region.

“The beast is still up. It’s surrounding the city and we’re here doing our very best for you,” the local fire chief, Darby Allen, said on Thursday.

According to estimates and is expect to impact a country already hurt by the dramatic fall in the price of oil, the evacuation has forced as much as a quarter of Canada’s oil output offline

The largest fire evacuation in Alberta’s history was how the week’s harrowing events were described by Justin Trudeau, Canada’s prime minister. He said that eh images emerging from Fort McMurray looked “like a war-torn corner of the world instead of our own backyard”.

“Homes have been destroyed. Neighbourhoods have gone up in flames. The footage we’ve seen of cars racing down highways while fire races on all sides is nothing short of terrifying,” he added.

The fire’s spectacular growth to 101,000 hectares – an area more than 10 times the size of Manhattan, and up from just 10,000 hectares earlier in the week has been fueled by unseasonably hot temperatures, extremely dry conditions and winds of up to 70km/h (44 mph). Officials said the fire could double in size by end of that day with temperatures expected to hit 27C (80F) on Saturday.

(Adapted from The Guardian)

Categories: Geopolitics