Dry and windy conditions wreak havoc across Alberta

Provincial officials are hoping for some relief in the form of precipitation soon, as dry and windy weather conditions fan the threat of fire in Alberta.

The province has taken the rare step of declaring a rare May “fire advisory” for the central and southern parts of the province.

In Calgary, grass fires have become almost a daily occurrence recently.

As a result, the city’s fire chief declared a level three fire ban Saturday night.

District Chief Allan Ball tells 660News it will stay in place until things improve.

“It was two years ago at this time, it was exactly this type of weather, when the whole Slave Lake thing occurred,” he says. “It’ll be in place until the weather changes; that’s the whole reason why it was put in place, because of the hot, dry conditions.

Ball says for the most part people have been compliant.

“Crews are still informing people about the fire ban, they went to several burning complaints throughout the evening (Saturday) and everyone, once they realized the fire ban was in place, put their backyard fires out,” he says.

In the meantime, two out of control wildfires have forced the evacuation of Nordegg and Lodgepole.

“The fire is still about 210 hectares in size and winds are still pushing it towards the Hamlet of Nordegg,” says Clearwater Communications Coordinator Christine Heggart.

She says crews have been battling it for about a week or so and made the decision to evacuate the town once flames passed the trigger point.

Given the speed of the wind, they wanted to make sure they had enough time to get everyone out safely.

Sunday night, peace officers in conjunction with the RCMP, evacuated 107 people; 59 of them registered at their reception centre, otherwise known as the Rocky Mountain House Curling Rink.

At this point, none of the residents have requested lodging or shelter.

“Some having family in the area, some had alternate locations, they were all self-sufficient,” says Heggart. “So we shut down the reception centre at 11 p.m. last night.”

Heggart says they are standing by to re-open it should the need arise, and right now things are as good as they can be.

“We were lucky, we had our evacuation plans in place,” she says. “The fire had been burning since the week previous; on Sunday there was a wind change so we were armed and ready to go.”

“The evacuation went down extremely smoothly and quickly, and the RCMP continue to man the barricades entering the south and north of Nordegg,” she explains. “As well as they have a roving patrol to keep the area secure, to make sure people don’t come back to the area.”

Near Lodgepole the wildfire is much larger, more than seven times the size of the one near Nordegg.

This is Alberta’s first fire advisory in two years.

According to the province’s website, 17 wildfires are currently burning, two of them out of control.

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