FORT MCMURRAY, Canada: Crews worked on Tuesday
(May 10) to start restoring water and electricity in this Canadian oil
hub turned into a ghost town by a towering ring of fire that reduced its
suburbs to ashes.
Government authorities, meanwhile, met with
oil company executives in the oil sands region of unseasonably dry
Alberta province to discuss how to get evacuated workers back on the job
and production up and running again.
Oil is the lifeblood of the region's economy,
and the fires raging around Fort McMurray for the past 10 days or so
have led to a 40 per cent drop in output.
Oil facilities have escaped major damage so
far. But fires are still burning and officials said the main task is to
keep them contained around those plants so workers can be flown back in.
Fire fighters using heavy machinery have
cleared away swaths of forest around the oil facilities to keep the fire
from spreading into them.
Another piece of bad news arrived on Tuesday
as health authorities reported an outbreak of gastronenteritis in
shelters for people evacuated from Fort McMurray, with 105 cases tallied
so far, most of them in one facility.
A ride through Fort McMurray showed the centre
of the now-empty city of 100,000 came out of the disaster largely
intact. But the suburbs, where some people got just a half hour's notice
to evacuate a week ago, were singed.
RUINED SUBURBS
The outlying areas are now a ruined, scorched
landscape dotted with the odd survivor, like an elementary school here
or a bus stop shelter there, coated in soot but still standing.
Plots of land where houses once stood are now separated by melted, twisted skeletons of metal fences.
Neat, nicely kept neighborhoods - with single-family homes, yards with swing sets and houses for dogs - are pretty much gone.
Rescued dogs sit in cages at an evacuee centre in Lac la Biche, Alberta, Canada. (AFP/Cole Burston)
Outside one lot, a totally charred bike lies
in the driveway of what had been a house. All that's left is a
disfigured stove, covered in rubble and leaning against a blackened
wall.
Fires are stilling burning to the east of the
city. And the tally of how much land was charred now stands at 2,230
square kilometres, with 2,400 homes and other buildings destroyed.
As one approaches the city from the south on
Highway 63, the lush green grass of springtime quickly gives way to
scorched trees whose foliage went up in flames.
'OCEAN OF FIRE'
Still, it could have been much, much, worse,
said Alberta Premier Rachel Notley. "The city was surrounded by an ocean
of fire only a few days ago. But Fort McMurray and the surrounding
communities have been saved and they will be rebuilt," she said on
Monday night.
"I've never seen anything like this," said
city fire chief Darby Allen. "If that fire had gotten into the downtown,
we would have lost the downtown area."
Inside the city, electrical utility crews got
to work replacing wooden poles burned away by the fire, so they get
power lines back up. It will be at least two weeks before people can
start returning to their homes, if they still have one, said Allen.
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