Firefighters continue to battle large Alta. fires

EDMONTON - Firefighters have yet to get a handle on several large wildfires burning out of control in Alberta, fire officials said Saturday.

As of 10 a.m., six wildfires in the Alberta regions of Fort McMurray, Slave Lake and Whitecourt had not yet been contained. Hot, dry weather sparked the wildfires last weekend, causing partial highway closures and fire bans in a dozen provincial parks in Alberta.

At one point there were 170 new fires in the province. However, on Saturday fire officials said that number was down to 52 blazes. There are 760 firefighters battling the blazes.

Firefighters hope that a forecast of cooler temperatures and a higher chance of showers Saturday and into Sunday will help them get the upper hand on the largest fire which is burning south of Fort McMurray, Alta., about 450 kilometres north of Edmonton.

As of Saturday morning, the Fort McMurray blaze was estimated to be 11,451 hectares.

``What we're looking for is higher relative humidity, which will help fight the fires,'' said Geoffrey Driscoll, a wildfire information officer with Sustainable Resource Development. More humidity in the air limits the extreme behaviour of fires, he said.

A crew of 25 firefighters arrived Thursday from the Yukon after a request the province made earlier in the week for outside help. Crews from the Northwest Territories, Ontario, New Brunswick and Mexico are also lending a hand.

Since last weekend, over 110,000 lightning strikes have been recorded in Alberta by the Provincial Forest Fire Centre. Those lighting strikes have contributed to the start of over 220 wildfires in Alberta's forests in the last seven days.

With a file from the Edmonton Journal