Union workers involved in the construction and maintenance of oilsands projects north of Fort McMurray face a great deal of uncertainty as wildfires force a second wave of evacuations and delay plans to restart production.
"At the Syncrude and Suncor base plants, which are the ones that are closest to Fort McMurray and the actual fire line just north of the city, there is some uncertainty about how long they are going to be offline before they are able to start up again," said Jay Bueckert, Fort McMurray regional director with the Christian Labour Association of Canada (CLAC). "A lot of contractors were preparing to bring people back, but now that has been pushed back again."
An out-of-control wildfire, pushed by hot dry conditions and wind, moved north toward Suncor and Syncrude oilsands projects on May 16. An Alberta Emergency Alert was issued at about 10 p.m., which extended a mandatory evacuation order north of Fort McMurray to just south of Fort MacKay. The distance between the two cities is about 53 kilometres.
Nineteen work camps and about 8,000 people were affected by the new evacuation order. The majority were sent by ground to work camps near Fort MacKay. But some were also bused or flown south to Edmonton and Calgary.
"We have now had one re-entry plan that has been put on hold because of the fire that flared up again yesterday (May 17) and took out the Blacksands Lodge," he said. "The fire also looks to be threatening the Suncor base plant again."
Early in the morning on May 17, the flames destroyed a 665-room oilsands work camp called Blacksands Executive Lodge, which provided temporary housing for workers in nearby oilsands facilities.
A few hours later the flames spread east and threatened the Noralta Lodge Fort McMurray Village, which can house more than 3,000 people. It also threatened Horizon North’s Birch Mountain, a 540-unit facility.
CLAC has about 200 people working at Suncor, while there are about 300 employed at the Syncrude site. These construction workers are involved in pipeline maintenance and infrastructure work.
Suncor transported personnel from the lodges near its base plant facility to other lodges further north. As a precautionary measure, Suncor started a staged and orderly shutdown of its base plant operations. The company will implement restart plans as soon as it is safe to do so.
CLAC has about 4,500 members working on the construction of the Fort Hills oilsands project about 90 kilometres north of Fort McMurray, who were evacuated with 88,000 residents on May 2.
"These people are all waiting to get their flight itineraries from their contractors," said Bueckert. "A lot of people have already had a stop-start kind of thing, where they have been told to go back, but then continue to sit at home."
These CLAC members are calling the Fort McMurray administrative staff, located at the Edmonton office, said Bueckert, and asking the following questions: What do I do for Employment Insurance? What does this mean for my job? And will I have something to go back to?
Bueckert said most of CLAC’s members working at oilsands projects are on a fly-in fly-out program, but about 600 members are residents of Fort McMurray. Some of these people have lost their homes.
About 2,500 CLAC members continue to undertake construction and maintenance work at the Horizon oilsands project, which is near the wildfire about 50 kilometres north of Fort McMurray.
"These people are concerned about evacuation plans and air quality," said Bueckert. "We are getting air quality reports every three hours from CNRL (Canadian Natural Resources Ltd.) to show where things are at on the site. We are telling our members if you don’t feel safe, then there is voluntary evacuation."
At the Kearl oilsands project there are about 500 CLAC members undertaking maintenance work.
In total, CLAC has about 10,000 members working in the Fort McMurray area in construction, maintenance and pipeline, as well as the service sector.
CLAC has launched the CLAC 4 Fort Mac campaign to help CLAC members who are permanent Fort McMurray residents affected by this disaster. The organization will match any and all donations from members across Canada up to $500,000.
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