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ottawa.—- A state of emergency has been declared in the province of Alberta in Canada after a wildfire forced all 88 000 residents of Fort McMurray to flee.

Officials say the fast-moving blaze could destroy much of the city.

The fire, which broke out on Sunday in the heart on the country’s oil sands region, has gutted 1 600 buildings, including a new school.

The evacuation was the largest-ever in Alberta. Oil companies operating in the area have been forced to cut output.

Several firms have shut down some pipelines. This was done to help evacuate non-essential personnel, reports say, but oil facilities are not in the current path of the fire.

So far there have been no reports of deaths or injuries, but two women gave birth in one evacuation centre, Reuters news agency reported.

Resident Neil Scott told the BBC: “It was something you’d see in a movie probably. I was stuck between a concrete barrier and the fire and I thought ‘You know what? I might not make it out’.

“There’s whole neighbourhoods that are gone. A hotel burned down, a gas station exploded.

“One lady that I met she actually was sheltered behind like an electrical box when it actually exploded and she felt a shockwave.”

“You could hear the pop, pop, pop because of the propane tanks,” Doug Sulliman, a former professional ice hockey player, told Associated Press. “The fire was just consuming these houses. It just destroyed the whole community.”

The night sky above Fort McMurray is illuminated by a fierce orange glow as fires continue to burn to the north and to the south.

Above the flat landscape of Alberta’s famous oil sands is a towering plume of smoke; a giant pyrocumulus cloud so big that it resembles ash from an erupting volcano and has even generated its own lightning.

As we drove north towards the city, hundreds of residents passed us, fleeing to the south, many towing trailers containing as many belongings as they could pack.

We also passed a fleet of yellow school buses, bound for the town of Anzac and its neighbouring communities, on a mission to rescue the latest people to be threatened by the fast-moving flames.

Fort McMurray itself is sealed off to all but the emergency services, but it is reportedly a scene of devastation.

One police officer who lives and patrols in the city told the BBC that, in his assessment, around half of it had been destroyed.

Experts have identified a number of factors combining to devastating effect to create the fire. — BBC.