The Financial Post reports in its Thursday edition that cooler temperatures have slowed Alberta's wildfires to the point where hundreds of workers are beginning to return to oil sands plants, drilling rigs and remote camps that were evacuated last weekend as a large blaze forced a halt to 345,000 barrels of daily production. The Post's Meghan Potkins writes, however, that the 62,040-hectare Caribou Lake fire burning at the southern border of the giant Athabasca oil sands deposit -- which threatens about 8 per cent of Alberta's daily oil output -- continues to burn out of control. Fireproofing measures to protect infrastructure include clearing a wide swath of the dense boreal forest surrounding drilling rigs and transmission lines and transferring fuels to sealed tanks. That is a far cry from the slapdash tactics recalled by veteran rig workers who 50 years ago might have downed tools to fight fires themselves. "I do remember, decades ago, when we'd only evacuate the rig when you actually saw flames somewhere close by," said Kevin Neveu, chief executive officer of Precision Drilling. "These days, we're evacuating when the fires are 10 or 20 kilometres away, when the risk is likely days away, not hours or minutes away."