In the wake of Slave Lake anniversary, Alberta issues sweeping fire ban

Experts are predicting it could be a scorcher in Alberta this summer, but not the shorts-and-sunglasses kind.

As CTV News reports, the threat of wildfires has grown so precarious that the province has issued a "sweeping fire ban" across all forested areas from the U.S. border all the way up to Fort McMurray.

The ban comes one year after a massive wildfire tore through Slave Lake in Alberta's north end, reducing a third of the town to cinder and causing $742 million in damage.

At present, crews are scrambling to put out three out-of-control blazes, two near Edmonton and another just southwest of Calgary.

Fourteen fires are currently listed as under control, including one near the vulnerable Slave Lake area, bringing the forest fire tally up to 270 since the beginning of April.

Diana McQueen, minister of sustainable development resources, told CTV that the situation was "serious" and above all, unnecessary.

"Most of the fires we are fighting right now appear to be human-caused and therefore were 100 per cent preventable," she said.

Fire conditions are exacerbated by the dry, warm and windy conditions that Alberta currently faces.

Forests north of Edmonton received less than half the regular amount of snow this winter, making for a particularly dry season.

And it's not just trees and wildlife that are under threat. Flames have consumed a number of shops and summer homes in the Grassland area where one of the fires is now the size of 700 football fields.

Eighty firefighters have been brought into battle the Grassland blaze, hoping to prevent a repeat of last May's Slave Lake disaster.

A year after what's believed to be a deliberately set fire razed 400 buildings to the ground and left 734 families homeless, the town is still struggling to overcome its trauma and rebuild from the rubble.

So far only 21 homes have been rebuilt and hundreds of residents still live in temporary trailers.

The culprit has yet to be caught.

To be on the safe side, the government has extended its warning list to include all terrain vehicles, as fires can spark from something as simple as debris or brush getting lodged in the exhaust pipe and falling to the ground.

The province's official website also offers tips on how to be "fire smart" by encouraging communities to take a proactive approach toward preventing warm weather blazes.