St. Albert continues to send firefighters and city staff to help Fort McMurray.
“Twelve more people went up this morning,” St. Albert fire chief Ray Richards said on Tuesday morning. The 12 firefighters currently up in the northern city were to return home on Tuesday evening.
Richards said Tuesday’s dozen means that 48 firefighters, plus staging officers, will have helped fight the fire. In addition, the city has sent up a couple of rotations of other municipal staff to help in the Emergency Operations Centre.
That means close to 60 people from the City of St. Albert have gone to help, Richards said.
The fire has mostly moved away from the northern communities, and that could mean in the next few days the number of extra firefighters required could go down.
“Their needs are going to slow down a bit,” Richards said. St. Albert firefighters have been serving mainly as structural firefighters within the city.
The situation looks like it might be stabilizing, he said.
Two more city staff headed up to the Emergency Operations Centre on Monday. Help will likely be needed for awhile yet as the municipality assesses damages and begins to restart operations.
St. Albert had been on standby to open a reception centre as of Friday.
“That’s not likely to happen now,” Richards said, noting many of the evacuees have left the Edmonton reception centre already and moved into different accommodation.
He praised the willingness of city staff to offer their services.
“We had really good response from all the departments,” Richards said.
The City of St. Albert has offered up a variety of services to evacuees staying in the city.
That includes free admission to civic recreation facilities like Servus Place or Fountain Park, free busing on St. Albert Transit and free admission to the upcoming children’s festival. The library is offering services for free to evacuees as well.
Greater St. Albert Catholic School District and St. Albert Public School District are accepting students from Fort McMurray.
There’s also free parking areas available for RVs or travel trailers, as well as temporary parking permits for people staying with an RV at a St. Albert residence.
