Workers for one of the largest oil sands companies affected by a wildfire in northern Canada started to return to the shuttered facilities on May 12th, a union official said, the latest indication the key petroleum production area was slowly coming back online, Reuters reported.

“It will take a few days to get the plant up and in condition to start handling feed,” Ken Smith, President of Unifor Local 707, the union that represents 3,400 Suncor Energy, said.

Facilities north of Fort McMurray that had been shuttered, largely because of heavy smoke rather than fire, were likely to come back on line first, in a matter of days in many cases.

At the same time, as Daily Mail wrote, oil prices fell dragged down by the gradual return of Canadian oil sands output, reversing a sharp rise the previous day when the US government detailed an unexpected fall in crude inventories.

By his side, the Premier of the province of Alberta, and the head of the Canadian Red Cross announced that residents of Fort McMurray, the oil-boom town that was evacuated last week because of the fire, would be offered direct financial aid. In Ottawa, Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, established an ad hoc cabinet committee to coordinate federal relief efforts.