The Regional Municipality of Wood Buffalo, which includes Fort McMurray – the hub of Alberta’s oil sands business – has issued a mandatory evacuation order for all of downtown Fort McMurray after a river flooded the area. There hasn’t been any flooding to sites of oil companies with operations in the area, Karim Zariffa, executive director of the Oil Sands Community Alliance (OSCA), told Reuters . Some of the oil sands firms are helping to pump water out of flooded areas by sending emergency staff, Zariffa told Reuters. The ice on the Athabasca River broke on Sunday and resulted in major flooding, also prompting a secondary state of local emergency in the area, which is already under a state of emergency due to the coronavirus pandemic. Natural disasters in the Fort McMurray area are nothing new. Back in 2016, major wildfires forced oil sands companies in the area to […]