A wildfire closed in on Fort McMurray in Alberta, Canada, this week. The town's 80,000 residents have been forced to flee, and many captured images of the encroaching flames as they left town. (Jenny Starrs/The Washington Post)
By Yanan Wang-May 4The sky in Fort McMurray, Alberta, was gray with smoke. The ground beneath was glowing red with fire.
Like everyone else, Cassie White, a 19-year-old resident of the Canadian oil-sands town, was trying to escape the flames that began to tear through neighborhoods Tuesday. But in a car bound for Edmonton with her boyfriend, White discovered that there was no easy way out.
In an interview with the Globe and Mail, White described a scene that resembled a “zombie apocalypse.”
As she drove south, “flames jumped over the highway” and engulfed a gas station to her left. “It was torched,” White said. Everywhere she turned, there was fire:
People were driving on the shoulder. There were flames maybe 15 feet high right off the highway. There was a dump truck on fire — I had to swerve around it — and there was a pickup truck on fire as well. The entire trailer park on my right was in flames. Roofs were coming down.
Abnormally warm weather and dry conditions combined to make Alberta’s boreal forest a “tinder box,” the Associated Press reported. While the wildfire appeared manageable over the weekend, it grew into an inferno Tuesday, buoyed by strong winds and dissolving into showers of ash.
The flames tore through the city, hitting several neighborhoods and a trailer park before striking the downtown core. Before nightfall, a mandatory evacuation order was issued. Fort McMurray’s 80,000 residents needed to go — but where?
Those with cars were directed to Highway 63, where vehicles were at a near-standstill. Residents watched as flames jumped the road.
