Regional Municipality of Wood Buffalo: History
The Municipality of Wood Buffalo was incorporated as a specialized municipality on April 1, 1995 as a result of the amalgamation of the City of Fort McMurray and Improvement District No. 143. Specialized municipality status was granted to provide "for the unique needs of a municipality including a large urban centre and a large rural territory with a small population." The Municipality of Wood Buffalo subsequently changed its name to the Regional Municipality of Wood Buffalo on August 14, 1996.
By June 12, 2013, after many days of heavy rain, the Regional Municipality of Wood Buffalo declared a state of emergency. They organized evacuations from some areas and placed others under boil water advisories as local waterways, such as the Hangingstone River, rose to dangerously elevated levels 30 kilometres (19 mi) south of Fort McMurray, causing the closure of Highway 63.
From May 3, 2016 on, over 80,000 people were affected by evacuations, by May 3 at 6:49 pm, the entirety of Fort McMurray and surrounding areas were placed under a mandatory evacuation. making it Alberta's largest evacuation for a wildfire.
By April 30, 2020, after a 25-kilometre-long ice jam formed in the Athabasca River, flooding the northern Alberta city's downtown and surrounding areas, and forcing 13,000 people from their home, Fort McMurray's spring flood caused more than $520 million in insured damage, according to new numbers from the Insurance Bureau of Canada. That flood damage was followed by $1.2 billion in damage from a hailstorm in Calgary, Airdrie and Rocky View County, flooding in Edmonton in July and another storm in Calgary on July 24.