Firefighters' dramatic attempt to save house from wildfire captured on camera

(The Edmonton Journal)

Dramatic video captured on a doorbell security camera shows Canadian firefighters trying to save a house in the Alberta city of Fort McMurray, one of the areas hit hardest by a devastating wildfire.

The nearly seven-minute video, posted by the Edmonton Journal, shows a team of firefighters spraying the house with fire hoses. At one point, the porch ceiling on resident Ken Bell’s house becomes engulfed in flames, but the team eventually manages to extinguish the blaze.

More than 80,000 people have left Fort McMurray in the heart of Canada' oil sands, where the fire has torched 1,600 homes and other buildings. Gas has been turned off, the power grid is damaged and water is not drinkable. Officials said there is no timeline to return residents to the city, but the provincial government is sending in a team on Monday to do some preliminary planning.

Officials said Sunday they had reached a turning point in fighting an enormous wildfire, hoping to get a "death grip'" on the blaze that ravaged parts of Canada's oil sands town of Fort McMurray amid cooler temperatures and light rain. Meanwhile, a massive evacuation of residents displaced by the blaze came to an end.

The fire and mass evacuation has forced a quarter or more of Canada's oil output offline and was expected to impact an economy already hurt by the fall in oil prices. The Alberta oil sands have the third-largest reserves of oil in the world behind Saudi Arabia and Venezuela. Its workers largely live in Fort McMurray.

No deaths or injuries have been reported from the fire itself. Notley, however, mentioned two evacuees who died in a traffic accident during the evacuation. Her voiced cracked when talking about the two and noted it is Mother's Day. Fifteen-year-old Emily Ryan and her stepmother's nephew, Aaron Hodgson, died in the accident.

Fort McMurray Fire Chief Darby Allen asked for the patience of residents who are eager to find out if their homes are still standing.

"We are really working hard on that, it's a complicated process, what's damaged, what's left," Allen said in a posted video. "We really will get that to you as soon as we possibly can. We care about all of you."

Lac La Biche, Alberta, normally a sleepy town of 2,500 about 110 miles south of Fort McMurray, was helping thousands of evacuees, providing a place to sleep, food, donated clothes and even shelter for their pets.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.