FORT MCMURRAY, Alberta (AP) — One neighbourhood in this oil sands town was a scene of utter devastation with incinerated homes completely levelled down to their foundation from a wildfire that Fort McMurray’s fire chief called a “beast … a fire like I’ve never seen in my life”.

But the wider picture was more optimistic as Fire Chief Darby Allen said 85 per cent of Canada’s main oil sands city remains intact.

Alberta’s Premier Rachel Notley got her first look at the devastation in Fort McMurray yesterday after cold temperatures and light rain had stabilised the massive wildfire to a point where officials could begin planning to get thousands of evacuated residents back.

The break in the weather has officials optimistic they’ve reached a turning point on getting a handle on the massive wildfire. The temperature dipped to 45 degrees Fahrenheit (7 degrees Celsius) yesterday following a week where the region had unseasonably warm temperatures.

Notley flew in yesterday morning to meet with local officials and took a ground tour of the town before holding a news conference at the emergency centre, her spokeswoman said.

More than 40 journalists were allowed into Fort McMurray on a bus escorted by police. The forest surrounding the road into town was still smoldering and there were abandoned cars. Only the sign remained at a Super 8 Motel and Denny’s restaurant on the edge of town.

The Beacon Hill neighborhood was a scene of utter devastation with homes burned down to their foundation.

Allen said at one point the fire jumped across a road in Beacon Hill that is 15 to 20 feet wide.

“It jumped that without thinking about it. This was a beast. It was an animal. It was a fire like I’ve never seen in my life,“ Allen said on the media bus.

But Allen said the firefighters managed to save 85 per cent of the homes and buildings in Fort McMurray, including the entire downtown district. He said in the early stages he feared that as much as half the city could burn down.

Allen said at one point the fire raced down a hill to the corner of a bank, but firefighters were able to halt the encroaching flames at the bank. Had they failed to stop it there, the fire would have destroyed the downtown district, he said.

But other neighbourhoods were not spared. In the Abesand district, townhouses were completely destroyed and charred children’s bikes could be seen in backyards. A parking facility was burned to the ground.

More than 80,000 people have left Fort McMurray, where the fire has burned 1,600 homes and other buildings since it broke out last Tuesday in the heart of Canada’s oil sands region.

Gas has been turned off, the power grid is damaged and water is undrinkable in Fort McMurray. More than 250 power company workers are trying to restore the grid and assess the gas infrastructure.

“We are now turning our minds more and more to the recovery effort,” Federal Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale said.

“This is going to be a long-term endeavour because at the moment there is no power and gas, no palatable watery supply. There’s dangerous hazardous material all over the place. It’s going to take a very careful, thoughtful effort to get that community back in a livable condition,” Goodale said.

There is no timeline to return evacuees, but the provincial government sent in a team yesterday to do preliminary planning.

It rained on Sunday, and with cooler temperatures forecast for the next three or four days, Alberta fire official Chad Morrison said firefighters should be able to put out hot spots to further protect Fort McMurray. He said he was pleased that they are making great progress.

“It definitely is a positive point for us, for sure,” said Morrison, who acknowledged the fight to contain the flames had reached turning point.

“We’re obviously very happy that we’ve held the fire better than expected,” he said. “This is great firefighting weather. We can really get in here and get a handle on this fire and really get a death grip on it.”

Notley said the wildfire grew much more slowly than was feared and was now about 620 square miles in size.

Officials completed the transport of 25,000 residents out of work camps north of the city after police oversaw a procession of thousands of vehicles Friday and Saturday, and a mass airlift of thousands of evacuees was also employed from the oil mine airfields. The bulk of the city’s evacuees moved south after Tuesday’s mandatory evacuation order, but 25,000 evacuees moved north and were housed in camps normally used for oil sands workers.

No deaths or injuries have been reported from the fire itself. But the fire has forced as much as a third of Canada’s oil output offline and was expected to impact an economy already hurt by the fall in oil prices.

“We’re just beginning to become aware of the economic impacts,” Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said.

Alberta’s oil sands have the third-largest reserves of oil in the world behind Saudi Arabia and Venezuela. Its workers largely live in Fort McMurray, a former frontier outpost-turned-city whose residents mostly come from elsewhere in Canada.