Holiday weekend rain bypasses Fort McMurray monster fire

Senior wildlife manager Chad Morrison says the blaze continues to move northeast away from communities and oilsands facilities in northern Alberta.

Laura Stewart, a Fire Information Officer, says there was only about five milimetres of rain that fell over the fire and they’re not expecting more until Thursday.

The blaze, which has grown to about 5230 square kilometres spread into Fort McMurray earlier in May, sending more than 80 000 people fleeing for safety. That includes areas already burned and now burning.

“A stronger USA dollar continued to extend pressure on commodity prices”, CMC Markets analyst Margaret Yang said in a note.

“The phased re-entry for all oil sands camps in the Regional Municipality of Wood Buffalo is now under way”, said Robin Smith, a spokesman for the municipality.

“Assuming there is no additional fire risk, we estimate the downtime from the fire and ramp to turnaround capacity to be three to four weeks, with an additional week to get production back up to full capacity with the completion of the turnaround”.

Athabasca Oil Corp resumed operations at its Hangingstone site following a shutdown on May 5, before which production volumes exceeded 9,000 barrels per day, the company said in a statement on Tuesday.

Firefighters may be battling the flames in forested areas for weeks or even months, given the dry conditions in a region that hasn’t received significant precipitation for more than two months, Morrison said.

Fort McMurray, Anzac, Gregoire Lake Estates, and the Fort McMurray and Fort McKay First Nations remain under a mandatory evacuation order.

Alberta officials said they were developing logistics plans to guide the thousands of residents expected to return, many of them to uninhabitable homes damaged by fire and smoke.

While it’s expected that a boil-water advisory will be lifted in Fort McMurray by the end of June, meaning residents will be able to drink from their taps again, it will be years before other elements of normalcy are restored for residents, said Danielle Larivee, Alberta’s minister of municipal affairs.