The wildfire, located 43 kilometres southeast of Edson, covers about 24,000 hectares. The Town of Edson, which has about 8,000 residents, is included in the evacuation zone. The northern boundary of the evacuation zone is Township Road 550 and southern is Township Road 520. The alert impacts Marlboro and Range Road 200 all the way to the east of Yellowhead County. Residents are advised to evacuate immediately. On Friday night, the province's emergency alert website was offline though updates continued to be provided through social media, broadcast on TV and radio and sent through text message.Īn Alberta emergency alert was issued for Yellowhead County and Town of Edson Friday at 5:37 p.m. "This is not great for wildfire activity that tends to cause very active wildfires and our folks on the ground are going to have to be very careful about their own safety and of course the safety of the communities that they're protecting." "We're expecting very warm weather and extremely strong winds, particularly in the northern half of the province," Christie Tucker, information unit manager with Alberta Wildfire, told a news conference Friday morning. And conditions aren't likely to improve in the short term. With so many evacuations underway, it's difficult to quantify how many people have had to leave their homes, but CBC News estimates that number is more than 20,000. On Friday night, there were more than 100 active fires in the province, with about a third of those being classified as out-of-control. The communities of Edson and Drayton Valley are among many where residents have been ordered to evacuate, due to the threat of fast-burning wildfires that continue to be fuelled by hot and dry conditions. The number of Albertans fleeing their homes continues to grow as out-of-control wildfires burn across the province, forcing thousands to evacuate their homes.
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