Fort McMurray evacuated | Emergency Preparedness | Forums

Holy crap, they are saying the whole town is going to burn. A friends wife asked him why they needed a bug out bag, I'm going to send this to him.

FORT MCMURRAY, Alta. - The entire city of Fort McMurray is under a mandatory evacuation order because of a raging wildfire eating its way into the community.

The nearly 61,000 residents are being told to head north and to wait for further instructions.

All commercial passenger flights into and out of Fort McMurray have been cancelled.

Brian Jean, leader of the Wildrose Party of Alberta and MLA for Fort McMurray-Conklin says he was not in the community Tuesday but was on the road heading back when he heard that his own home was burning.

He told Global News that he predicts the damage will be much worse than people are currently imagining.

Earlier today, tens of thousands of people from the northern Alberta oilsands city were forced from their homes by a raging wildfire Tuesday that engulfed buildings, pushed billowing dark clouds of thick smoke into the air and spit ash down on residents.

The wildfire, whipped by unpredictable winds on a day when the temperature reached 32 C, worsened dramatically in a short time and many residents had little notice to flee. Towers of bright-orange flames cut through the clouds and skipped over tinder-dry forest.

Unseasonably hot temperatures combined with dry conditions have transformed the boreal forest in much of Alberta into a tinder box. The wildfire threat ranges from very high to extreme.

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