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Residents of a rural area northwest of Edmonton are being ordered to get out of their homes as a wildfire in the area has set buildings ablaze.<\/p>\n
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An Alberta Emergency Alert<\/a> was issued just before 5 p.m. in the County of Barrhead<\/a>, which issued a state of local emergency due to the wildfire.<\/p>\n The county said there are structural fires in\u00a0 two subdivisions around\u00a0Thunder Lake, which is approximately 20 km west of Barrhead.<\/p>\n The first order to evacuate was for people in the Summerlea subdivision, who were allowed to return to their homes about two hours later.<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t \t\t\t\t\tGet daily National news<\/p>\n Get daily Canada news delivered to your inbox so you’ll never miss the day’s top stories.<\/p>\n Then at about 5:45 p.m., the evacuation alert was expanded to the Thunder Lake subdivision \u2014 south of the Thunder Lake Provincial Park boat launch \u2014 where the county said there were structural fires.<\/p>\n Story continues below advertisement<\/p>\n As of 7 p.m., those residents still have to stay away from their properties as crews battled the flames.<\/p>\n The fire is outside of the province\u2019s jurisdiction (the forest protection area) but Alberta Wildfire sent help to assist the county.<\/p>\n It\u2019s not known how many buildings are on fire or what type of structure they are.<\/p>\n An area resident told Global News they began to see thick, black smoke rising into the sky from across the lake around 4:15 p.m.<\/p>\n![\"Get](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/national.jpg\")
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