Alberta oil sands region is ablaze

Alberta fires consume three further communities.

Fast-moving wildfires spread farther across the Alberta oil sands region on Thursday, forcing the evacuation of three more communities south of Fort McMurray and the work camps north of the city. Thousands of people who fled the flames earlier in the week had to evacuate for the second time in three days.

The three communities — Anzac, Gregoire Lake Estates and Fort McMurray First Nation — are about 30 miles south of Fort McMurray, indicating the scale and reach of the wildfire, which drove 88,000 people out of Fort McMurray this week, some of them to a shelter in Anzac. When the three communities were given the order overnight to clear out, frightened residents and evacuees boarded buses and packed up their cars for the slow exodus to Edmonton, the nearest big city.

Strong winds gusting up to 30 miles an hour made tackling the wall of flames risky on Thursday. The raging wildfire has already burned over 25,000 acres and destroyed more than 1,600 buildings in Fort McMurray, the heart of Canada’s oil sands region — a vast stretch of forested wilderness with the third-largest reserves of oil in the world.

Read The New York Times story - “Thousands More Flee Fast-Spreading Wildfire in Canada.”