Four Fort McMurray neighbourhoods were ordered to evacuate on Tuesday as a wildfire gets closer to the city.
Alberta Emergency Alert issued the order(opens in a new tab) for Beacon Hill, Abasand, Prairie Creek and Grayling Terrace just after 2 p.m.
All residents were asked to leave by 4 p.m., according to the alert.
Residents are being asked to go to the
reception centre in Lac La Biche County.
As of 8 p.m., the fire was nearly 21,000 hectares, burning 7.5 kilometres from the Fort McMurray landfill and six kilometres from the intersection of highways 63 and 881.
At 4:30 p.m. RCMP announced the temporary closure of Highway 63 northbound between Highway 881 and Saprae Creek Trail to allow for preventative fire measures.
The following areas are under evacuation alert: Fort McMurray, Saprae Creek, Gregoire Lake Estates, Fort McMurray First Nation #468, Anzac and Rickards Landing Industrial Park.
“The reason why it’s so important to clear [the neighbourhoods] out is so that we can mobilize our fire resources to fight this fire and defend these neighbourhoods,” Jody Butz, director of emergency management for the Regional Municipality of Wood Buffalo said. “We are confident that we have the resources to defend these areas, but we need people out of harm’s way.”
Butz urged residents in other parts of the city not to leave the community until residents under the evacuation order had ”
A seismic shift could be coming to the B.C. political landscape as backroom talks to strike a deal between the province’s two right-of-centre parties are underway.
“It’s a well-known historical fact that the centre-right can’t win as two parties in B.C.,” noted University of British Columbia political scientist Gerald Baier on Wednesday.
The BC Conservatives are battling with the BC NDP for the lead in recent polls with the opposition BC United falling far behind. However, there are still worries that vote splitting could propel the NDP to a supermajority. On Wednesday, BC United leader Kevin Falcon clarified that any deal would not be a full merger with the BC Conservatives. There are issues around many of their candidates, there are issues around logistics, but some other options for co-operation could be looked at in terms of identifying seats and deciding whether both parties need to run people in every single seat,” a statement from his office said. But even that scenario would present practical challenges. “BC Conservatives only have two seats and BC United have a couple of dozen, and BC United presumably would not want to give up any of their incumbents,” opined Hamish Telford, a political scientist at the University of the Fraser Valley.
Still, an appetite for some union is growing, including from a couple of former B.C. premiers. Bill Vander Zalm was a Social Credit premier from 1986 to 1991. He supports some form of co-operation between the two parties. “I think it would be nice to see a more united, conservative or right-wing approach to this, because something needs to happen – and something dramatic,” said Vander Zalm Wednesday, from his Delta home.Former BC Liberal premier Christy Clark told CTV News Wednesday in a statement that it is “incredibly important” for the two parties to find a way to topple the reigning BC NDP.
Source: https://bc.ctvnews.ca/
Monday, April 20, 2026
