Alberta town on fire

Hope everyone is ok.

Thanks for all the kind words. Here's a bit of an update and a couple video links for anyone interested:

Syncrude, the largest single-source crude producer in Canada, shut down their plant north of Fort McMurray on Saturday and evacuated 1,500 employees due to fire approaching their site. The company said their 4,800 employyes jobs are safe, and they'll continue to be paid as usual. That's rather nice. Since those plants have significant fire breaks and no vegetation, and well-trained industrial firefighters, there wasn't a lot of concern about the facility. It was more a precaution as far as I know.

Otherwise, the fire is still growing. They got a bit of rain yesterday, but lots of wind and the rain just wasn't enough.

Here are a couple updates:

Fort McMurray Neighborhood Damages-Sunday Update

Fire Update-Sunday

The Premier will be going back up today to start planning how and when residents will be able to return (obviously not in the immediate future as it's still burning out of control).

Well the fire area is now 875,000 Acres. It burned back north and west of the city and a whole bunch of oil production facilities and work camps were evacuated (again). A 650-room camp was destroyed by the fire, but as far as I know not much else was touched. Yesterday some of the production facilities were still under threat.

A house exploded in the city while they were turning gas back on, and damaged 6 other homes. So the dangers aren't over, but they're hoping if all goes well they can start moving some of the 88,000+ displaced people back in by June 1.

Over 2400 buildings destroyed, 500+ damaged. Overall it is somewhere around 10% of the city.

I almost hate it that I posted about this little fire out here with this going on up there...prayers still coming for them!

Yeah...prayers that everyone stays safe...

Always bad when this stuff happens...life is the primary concern....just a bad deal....

smallfoot said:

I almost hate it that I posted about this little fire out here with this going on up there...prayers still coming for them!

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Don't feel bad smallfoot, any wildfire is not good news. I appreciated hearing about your story.

Snopro, here's a related story. I have a nephew that sets up and fixes up oilfield camps. Well, he just happened to be in a camp near Fort McMurray, when he sent us pictures of their evacuation a couple of days ago. Then the next day he sent word that the camp was gone. The guys had just got out of there in time.

MercuryMac said:

Snopro, here's a related story. I have a nephew that sets up and fixes up oilfield camps. Well, he just happened to be in a camp near Fort McMurray, when he sent us pictures of their evacuation a couple of days ago. Then the next day he sent word that the camp was gone. The guys had just got out of there in time.

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It's funny you mention that. My friends brother was up in that camp. Got evacuated the first time, didn't have much fuel in his truck so left it there. Went back up last week Thursday, got evacuated Monday and left his truck there again. In the below picture taken Tuesday, there's a black truck on the right by the burning camp, and that's his truck. I guess he won't be going back for a while. This was the Black Sands Lodge camp.

Its spread to Saskatchewan now.