Much of Slave Lake destroyed by wildfires people

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Much of Slave Lake destroyed by wildfires
No injuries or deaths reported
Mike Lloyd May 16, 2011 06:47:55 AM
0 SLAVE LAKE, AB. (NEWS1130) - Almost one-third of Slave Lake, Alberta is gone and is in smoldering ruin this morning after wildfires destroyed the town.  Highways 2 and 88 were partially cut off and hundreds of buildings have been consumed, including town hall and the radio station.  

The town's population of 7,000 people was ordered to move toward large green areas, beaches or big parking lots like Wal-mart or Canadian Tire.

Duncan MacDonnell with Alberta's Sustainable Resource Development tells News1130 they are battling unpredictable wildfires across the north.

"We've got some very large fires out there.  The thing is with these freakish winds... yesterday we had gusts of up to 100 km/h it is driving the flames very fast and these fires are moving very quickly."   

Unfortunately, those winds prevented waterbombers from taking off to douse the flames.

McDonnell is optimistic things should get better today.  "Yesterday was probably the worst weather that we're going to see over the next little while with the freakish winds.  It's going to get marginally better.

He adds there are roughly 1,000 firefighters in the area right now.  "[We have] Twenty air tankers and we're bringing in resources from Ontario and BC.  We've got another 200 firefighters coming in today and tomorrow."   

No deaths or injuries have been reported.

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