LAC LA BICHE, Alberta -- Canadian officials worked Saturday to complete the evacuation of work camps north of Alberta's main oil-sands city of Fort McMurray, fearing that an already history-making wildfire would double in size and reach even into the neighboring province of Saskatchewan.
By late Saturday, the fire had encroached on the main oil-sands facilities run by Suncor Energy Inc. and Syncrude Canada Ltd. just north of Fort McMurray, knocking out an estimated 1 million barrels of production from Canada's energy hub.
Chad Morrison of Alberta Wildfire said the blaze in Alberta province will cover more than 494,211 acres by today and will continue to grow because of unseasonably high temperatures, dry conditions and high winds.
"The fire may double in size in the forested areas today. As well, they may actually reach the Saskatchewan border. In no way is this fire under control," Alberta Premier Rachel Notley said.
Thousands of displaced residents got a sobering drive-by view of their burned-out neighborhoods as evacuation convoys continued Saturday south through Fort McMurray. The images included charred vehicles and buildings, and utility poles that had burned from the bottom up, leaving their tops hanging in the wires like wooden crosses.
No deaths or injuries had been reported in the fire as of Saturday evening.
Notley said about 12,000 evacuees had been airlifted from oil-sands-mine airfields over Thursday and Friday, and about 7,000 were evacuated in police-escorted highway convoys.
Notley's comments came as officials said the flames were threatening the edges of the Suncor oil-sands facility, about 15 miles north of Fort McMurray. Nonessential personnel there had been evacuating, and efforts to protect the site were under way.
"This facility, it should be emphasized, is highly resilient to forest fires as we have seen in [the] past when it's previously been threatened by very large fires," Notley said.
Oil-sands-mining sites are resistant to fires because they are cleared of vegetation, Morrison said. He said the sites also have exceptional industrial fire departments.
The fire and mass evacuations have forced as much as a quarter of Canada's oil output offline, something expected to affect a Canadian economy already hurt by a fall in the price of oil. The Alberta oil sands have the third-largest reserves of oil in the world behind Saudi Arabia and Venezuela. Most workers there live in Fort McMurray.
Police said many parts of Fort McMurray have burned, and visibility there is low because of smoke. Officers wore masks as they checked homes to make sure everyone was out.
More than 80,000 people have fled Fort McMurray, where the fire has torched 1,600 homes and other buildings. Gas has been turned off, the power grid is damaged and water is not drinkable. Officials said there is no timeline for allowing residents to return to the city.
In Tuesday's mandatory evacuation of the city most of the evacuees fled south where it was safer and where better support services were available. About 25,000 went north, staying in oil-sands work camps that usually house energy company employees. Late last week, the decision was made to relocate those 25,000 south.
Oil-sands mines close
On Saturday, Syncrude, an oil-sands-mining company controlled by Suncor, shut down its Aurora mine and Mildred Lake operation. The company said in a statement that while there was no imminent threat from flames, smoke had reached its Mildred Lake site. It started evacuating employees early Saturday.
Syncrude, which has a production capacity of 350,000 barrels of oil a day, said it will resume operations when the fire risk has passed. It said the jobs of more than 4,800 employees were secure.
Federal Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale said the wildfire is feeding off the "extremely dry" boreal forest. "This is a highly dangerous situation," he said.
Morrison said the fire is now burning away from communities. He said lower temperatures are expected today and this week.
"We feel that it will hold there if we get some cooler conditions over the next two or three days," he said.
A chance of rain is in the forecast for the area today, but help stop the flames.
The 494,211 acres includes burned areas and areas still in flames. The fire started May 1 and has destroyed more than 772 square miles of northern Alberta forest.
"We still have a long ways to go and many long weeks and months ahead of us fighting this fire," Morrison said. "We expect to be out fighting the fire in the forested areas for months, and that's not uncommon for large wildfires."
Royal Canadian Mounted Police Inspector Kevin Kunetzki said officers were searching every residence in Fort McMurray and had completed about 30 percent of that work. On Friday, officers found a family of five with small children who didn't have the means to evacuate. He said there were very few who were refusing to evacuate.
Help for evacuees
Lac La Biche, Alberta, normally a town of 2,500 about 109 miles south of Fort McMurray, was helping thousands of evacuees Saturday, providing places to sleep, food, donated clothing and even shelter for their pets.
Jihad Moghrabi, a spokesman for Lac La Biche County, said 4,400 evacuees have gone through The Bold Center, a sports facility in town. At the center, tables were piled with clothes, towels and other items. The center was offering three free meals a day and other services, including mental health services. A kennel was set up on-site for people's pets.
Philip Wylie, wife Suda and 13-month-old daughter, Phaedra, were among those staying at the center after leaving their apartment in Fort McMurray on Tuesday.
"Trees were blowing up against our vehicles," Philip Wylie said of the caravan drive out of town. "We don't know what we're going to go back to, or when we can go back."
Suda Wylie said the day they evacuated had started out clear, and they thought they would be safe. Then, in a matter of hours, she said, she opened the blinds and "the sky was orange."
They rushed to pack, grabbed documents, passports and their laptops and then fled, but believing that they would be able to return home soon, they packed only enough clothes for two days.
The family spent the first night camping beside a pond near a sandpit. Once they realized that the fire was growing and they couldn't get home, they went to an evacuation center that was later also evacuated because of the fire. They arrived at The Bond Center late Wednesday.
"Everything that I'm wearing right now, besides my shoes and my socks, is donation," Philip Wylie said.
As evacuees filled up shelters, hotels and homes of friends in Edmonton, Alberta, a few compared their situation to that of refugees fleeing war-torn Syria before those refugees made it to Canada a few months ago.
One Syrian evacuee, Wedad Rihani, a 68-year-old lawyer, arrived in Fort McMurray just 70 days before she was forced to flee the fire. She is one of six members of her family who was sponsored by her son, Fahed Labek, a chemist in the oil-sands town.
"I left fire back home created by humans to come to the fire here," Rihani said, her son providing a translation. "Here you can escape. At home there's no escape. Here you get a smile. There you get no help."
Rihani uses a wheelchair and lost her eyeglasses in the rush to evacuate. She said Fort McMurray, even in its current circumstances, is preferable to what she had left behind in Syria. She said most of the other 25,000 Syrian refugees allowed into Canada by the government of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau were probably facing less drama.
"A lot of other Syrians went to other cities in Canada where, thank God, there is no fire," she said. "Our bad luck followed. Hopefully, everything will be safe now."
Information for this article was contributed by Rachel La Corte and Rob Gillies of The Associated Press; by Ian Austen and Dan Levin of The New York Times; and by Robert Tuttle and Rebecca Penty of Bloomberg News.
A Section on 05/08/2016