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Fort McMurray Fire Dash Cam Footage Captures Terrifying Escape

The escape is truly harrowing.

Videos captured on a vehicle's dash cameras show the terrifying escape route evacuees faced as an out-of-control wildfire swept through Fort McMurray, Alta. this week.

Michel Chamberland took six videos, which were posted to YouTube, as he left the neighbourhood of Beacon Hill on Tuesday.

One of them shows blue flames towering over the sides of the road, and embers bouncing off of his vehicle's hood as Chamberland joins a line of residents waiting to flee the area.

"Driving out you can feel the pressure on you to get out of there, traffic was slow felt like eternity," he wrote in the comments of the YouTube video.

"You can feel the pressure on you to get out of there."

Chamberland was asleep after working a night shift, when he awoke to a friend updating him on the evacuation.

"I ran outside and I could hear the fire crackling in the forest beyond my neighbours homes."

He only had a few minutes to grab his wallet, passport and throw some clothing in a garbage bag before he left.

His escape is what nightmares are made of.

"You could feel the heat sitting there waiting for the lane to move," he writes.

In another video, Chamberland's rear dash cam shows fires burning on his neighbours' lawns as emergency vehicles' sirens scream past him, heading towards the inferno.

Beacon Hill is one of the hardest-hit communities in Fort McMurray. On Wednesday, the Regional Municipality of Wood Buffalo reported 70 per cent of the homes in Beacon Hill had been destroyed.

Over 80,000 residents have fled the area in what Premier Rachel Notley says is the largest fire evacuation in the province's history.

Also on HuffPost:

Fort McMurray Wildfire (May 2016)

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