Yesterday I
heard the dreadful news about the devastating fires around Fort McMurray Alberta. Not long afterwards, the evacuation notice spread to all residents of the town and its surrounds - around 80,000 people. The entire city was evacuated. That's the largest ever fire evacuation in Alberta, probably Canada and maybe even in the world. The latest I've read is that the winds have shifted and the evacuation notice has spread to
communities south of Fort McMurray, including one evacuation centre, as indicated in the video in the tweet below.
To evacuate from Fort McMurray there's really only one road, Highway 63 as the map below shows. It's about 434 km to Edmonton. To shift 80,000 people plus out of harms way would have been a garguantan task. Some went to sites considered safe outside of Fort McMurray, and various evacuation centres. I don't know where the whole 80,000 people went to - that's a lot of people to accommodate.
