The province has confirmed it will push ahead with a review of the timeline in which residents were evacuated from Fort McMurray as the monster wildfire breached the city last month.
During a news conference in Edmonton Friday held to discuss government response to the wildfire, Alberta Municipal Affairs Minister Danielle Larivee said there will be an analysis of the decisions made around the mandatory evacuation order imposed on May 3, to see if decisions were made quickly enough.
“In hindsight we all wish we could have made that decision sooner and gotten people out,” said Larivee. “But certainly no judgement in terms of the work that they did because it changed so quickly they made it at a point that made sense
“Certainly, as we’ve been going along, we’ve been making note of things that we could do differently next time.”
Larivee did not elaborate when asked what could have been done differently.
In the late afternoon of May 3, a mandatory evacuation order was imposed on Fort McMurray. As some 90,000 residents fled the out-of-control wildfire, the blaze was already inside the city.
Many drove on roads with flames towering on either side, while others were stuck in gridlock both in the city and on Highway 63 heading out of the city.
In desperation, some drove down wrong lanes and on sidewalks, while many ran out of fuel and abandoned vehicles.
Some parents drove towards the flames to retrieve children who they believed were still in schools in Abasand and Beacon Hill.
Two teenagers related to a firefighter died in a fiery crash on the highway after fleeing the city.
Larivee said the situation changed so quickly it challenged everyone in terms of grasping what needed to be done.
She said the regional emergency operation centre and the emergency response team which made the decision to evacuate “worked tremendously well in terms of planning and guiding the residents to leave.”
While Larivee could not say when the analysis surrounding the evacuation would take place, she noted sooner would be better as recollection would be fresher.
“We will see if we learned anything from it,” said Larivee, “and based on that if we can provide some guidance to our municipal emergency response teams to see if we can help them make those decisions more effectively going forward.”
Larivee praised emergency responders as “incredibly courageous” and said she was “very proud of the work” of the regional emergency operation centre and looked forward to honouring that during the analysis.
The Regional Municipality of Wood Buffalo has not yet provided comment.