Evacuation orders and alerts are being issued for residents in areas of northern Alberta, including Fort McMurray, Grande Prairie, and Greenview.
The evacuation alert for the entire city of Fort McMurray, as well as the Saprae Creek area, was issued Friday evening and urges people to be ready to leave.
“At this time an evacuation order has not been issued,” reads the notice. “This is an alert for residents in the effected area to be ready to evacuate on short notice.”
Jody Butz, regional fire chief for the Regional Municipality of Wood Buffalo, said in a video update posted on Facebook late Friday that the two communities were not at risk and winds were pushing the wildfire away from Fort McMurray.
Officials said the fire was 16 kilometers southwest of Fort McMurray as of 9 p.m. local time.
Alberta Wildfire said in the late afternoon that the wildfire was about two square kilometers in size, but by early evening that had grown to 10 square kilometres.
Butz said in the video update that fire behavior had dropped with lower temperatures, and the spread was expected to slow as temperatures dropped further overnight.
“We expect things to look better tomorrow morning,” he said.
Alberta Wildfire said four crews of wildland firefighters, three helicopters and airtankers were fighting the fire, to be joined by night-vision helicopters overnight.
Fort McMurray has a population of about 68,000. A wildfire there in 2016 destroyed roughly 2,400 homes.
Meanwhile, an evacuation order also came in for the MD of Greenview Number 16 just after midnight Saturday, asking everyone along the North Goodwin area west of Range Road 21, between Township Road 734 and Township Road 741, to “evacuate now.”
Residents are being asked to head to Paradise Inn at 369 Highway Street in Valleyview. The Alberta Emergency Alert system says they should be prepared to be gone for at least three days.
Later Friday, the County of Grande Prairie issued an evacuation order for an area roughly 50 kilometers northeast of the city of the same name.
Alberta Wildfire estimated an out-of-control blaze there to be about 0.4 square kilometers in size. It said the fire was about four kilometers east of the hamlet of Teepee Creek and burning away from the community.
Evacuees were told to register at the Pomeroy Hotel and Conference Centre in the city of Grande Prairie.
The County of Grande Prairie has also issued an evacuation alert for everyone from Township Road 750 to Township Road 730 and Range Road 32 to Smoky River.
Northern Alberta did not see the recent rainfall that the southern part of the province experienced this week, and the wildfire risk in that part of the province remains extreme.
