Wildfire northeast of Fort McMurray now largest in Alberta

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The out of control wildfire burning 70 kilometres northeast of Fort McMurray is now the largest in Alberta. High temperatures and dry conditions pushed the wildfire, which has been labelled MWF047, to roughly 670 square kilometres in size on Friday morning.

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It did not move towards any industrial sites or communities, and there are no evacuation orders in the Fort McMurray Wood Buffalo region. As a precaution, Suncor and Cenovus have removed all non-essential staff respectively from the Firebag and Sunrise operations.

This wildfire remains eight kilometres northeast of Firebag, and 50 kilometres northeast of the Fort McKay First Nation and Metis Nation.

The wildfires clustered south of Fort McMurray are a combined 145 square kilometres. It is located 11 kilometres west of Highway 63 and 40 kilometres southwest of Fort McMurray. This complex grew significantly on Thursday.

There are 250 firefighters and support staff fighting MWF047. Another 18 helicopters are attacking the wildfire from the air and 16 pieces of heavy equipment working on this complex. An incident management team is overseeing operations.

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There are 78 firefighters and 14 helicopters fighting the southern wildfires, which is being called the Algar Lake Complex. An incident management team from Ontario is scheduled to arrive Saturday to oversee operations.

Firefighters are coming to the Fort McMurray region from other jurisdictions. Alberta will soon host 100 firefighters and 43 overhead staff from Ontario, and 20 firefighters and six overhead staff from New Brunswick.

Alberta Forestry and Parks Minister Todd Loewen said Thursday that the province met this year’s hiring goals for wildland firefighters, but most of them need relief. It has also been difficult moving heavy equipment to some wildfires because many of the wildfires are in remote muskeg.

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“When it comes to the weather conditions, any hot, dry weather–especially with wind–is going to affect the wildfire and how those wildfires spread,” said Loewen. “We’re seeing pretty intense activity as it stands right now on our on the wildfires that we have burning our landscape.”

Since Canada Day, there have been 184 new wildfire starts and 99 were caused by lightning. Alberta Wildfire has responded to 700 wildfires this year that have burned 2,000 square kilometres. To compare, this time last year 20,000 square kilometres had been burned by wildfires in Alberta.

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vmcdermott@postmedia.com

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