A wildfire breaks out along a highway south of Fort McMurray, Alberta. Picture: Jonathan Hayward/The Canadian Press.

As police and military oversaw the procession of at least 500 vehicles, a mass airlift of evacuees resumed.

A day after 8000 people were flown out, 5500 more were expected to be flown out on Friday (local time) and another 4000 were expected to be flown on Saturday (local time).

More than 80,000 people have left Fort McMurray in the heart of Canada’ oil sands, where the fire has torched 1600 homes and other buildings.

A lounge room security camera captured the shocking moment the raging fire destroyed a family home. CLICK HERE TO WATCH.

The mass evacuation has forced as much as a quarter of Canada’s oil output offline according to estimates and is expected to impact a country already hurt by a dramatic fall in the price of oil.

A convoy of evacuees drives south as flames and smoke rises along the highway near Fort McMurray, Alberta.Source:AFP

The Alberta provincial government, which declared a state of emergency, said the size of the blaze had grown to more than 101,000 hectares (249,571 acres). No deaths or injuries were reported.

The government said 1100 firefighters, 110 helicopters, 295 pieces of heavy equipment and more than 27 air tankers were fighting the fire.

But Chad Morrison, Alberta’s manager of wildfire prevention, said the fire covers 101,000 hectares (249,571 acres) and “there is a high potential that the fire could double in size by the end of tomorrow.”

Morrison said no amount of resources would put this fire out. They need rain.

“We have not seen rain in this area for the last two months of significance,” Morrison said. “This fire will continue to burn for a very long time until we see some significant rain.” Environment Canada forecast a 40 per cent chance of showers in the area on Sunday.

Smoke rises from a wildfire in Fort McMurray, Alberta. Picture: Jason Franson /The Canadian Press.Source:AP

Morrison said he expected the fire to expand into a more remote forested area northeast and away from Fort McMurray but said extremely dry conditions and a hot temperature of 27C was expected on Saturday along with strong winds.

He said cooler conditions were expected on Sunday and Monday.

About 25,000 evacuees moved north in the hours after Tuesday’s mandatory evacuation, where oil sands work camps that usually house employees were used to house evacuees.

But the bulk of the more than 80,000 evacuees fled south to Edmonton and elsewhere, and officials are moving everyone south where it is safer and they can get better support services. The convoy was stopped for an hour.

The Alberta government is providing cash to 80,000 evacuees from the Fort McMurray fire to help them with their immediate needs.

Police were escorting 50 vehicles at a time, south through the city itself on Highway 63 at a distance of about 20km south and then releasing the convoy.

A plane flies overhead along a highway near Fort McMurray, Alberta.Source:AFP

At that point another convoy of 50 cars begins.

All intersections along the convoy route have been blocked off and evacuees are not being allowed back to check on their homes in Fort McMurray. The city is surrounded by wilderness, and there are essentially only two ways out via road.

Crystal Mercredi packed her two kids and got out of town Tuesday, and even though her husband was just 20 minutes behind packing a trailer, he didn’t get out until hours later because it was bumper to bumper traffic as the fire descended upon the city.

“I was worried that we were going to lose him,” she said in a telephone interview.

“He knew that I was upset so he jumped the curb on the wrong side of the road and got out.” Mercredi evacuated north but then moved south overnight and headed to Lac La Biche, Alberta, about 175km south, where her family has a lake house that housed 50 people the first night of the mandatory evacuation.

Lac La Biche, normally a sleepy town of 2500, is helping about 12,000 evacuees, providing a place to sleep, food, donated clothes and even shelter for their pets.

A group trying to rescue animals from Fort McMurray wait at roadblock as smoke rises from a forest fire near Fort McMurray, Alberta.Source:AFP

Fanned by high winds, scorching heat and low humidity, the fire grew from 75sq km on Tuesday to 100sq/km on Wednesday, but by Thursday it was almost nine times that — at 850sq/km. That’s an area roughly the size of Calgary, Alberta’s largest city.

The fire is so large that smoke from the fair is blanketing parts of the neighbouring province of Saskatchewan where Environment Canada has issued special air quality statements for several areas.

Morrison, the wildfire prevention manager, said the cause of the fire hasn’t been determined, but that it started in a remote forested area and could have been ignited by lightning.

The region has the third-largest reserves of oil in the world behind Saudi Arabia and Venezuela.

Greg Pardy, an analyst with RBC Capital Markets, said that as much as 1 million barrels a day of oil may be offline, based on oil company announcements.

That’s just over a third of Canada’s total oil sands output, Pardy noted.

Smouldering trees can be seen along the highway near Fort McMurray, Alberta.Source:AFP