Wildfire officials hoping residents follow phases in re-entry plan

Wildfire recovery officials are hoping evacuees returning to their fire-ravaged community will abide by the honour system.

Bob Couture, Director of Emergency Management for the Regional Emergency Operations Centre, said they’re still on track to allow evacuees to return on June 1st, but they’re asking people to follow the phased re-entry approach.

“We’re asking people to abide by those zone conditions, we trust and we hope people would abide by that and just out of respect as we try and load into the community, not all at once.” he said. “When we are bringing our community back, and residents back in we’re hoping that they also respect what we’re asking them to do, and again to load that many people into the community at one time causes problems of overloading the system, we want to do it in that stage effect out of respect of all residents.” Couture said.

Couture said those wanting details on exactly how the re-entry will look will need to wait a little bit longer.

“We will put that out here shortly in the next couple days at what time that will exactly be, as you can understand there are some complexities with that, we don’t want people sitting on the highway at 1 o’clock in the morning, sitting on the highway in anticipation of that time.” Couture said.

Speaking Thursday, Couture said the final details are still being hammered out.

Residents are being asked to return to Fort McMurray in four phases over the four days beginning next Wednesday.

Crews began conducting a re-entry dry run on Thursday.

Top Stories

Top Stories

Most Watched Today