Fort McMurray, Alberta: Massive Wildfire, 80,000 Ordered to Evacuate

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
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Ft. McMurray, like a broad swath of Canada, is in a boreal forest. Fire is vital for boreal forests. Old trees fuel intense fire. Intense fire opens the cones (as well as releasing minerals back to the soil). Opening the cones results in the growth of the next generation of trees. Many of the trees themselves in the boreal forest have evolved to burn, for example black spruce.

If there is a boreal forest, there will be forest fires. If there are no forest fires, there will be no boreal forest.

The problem is that forest fires devastate communities, so the trick is to mitigate the harm by managing fires. Most fires are in remote wilderness, so little if anything is done concerning them. For fires closer to inhabited areas, there are two primary mitigation methods. The first is by way of controlled burns (periodically setting fires of defined scope to burn off fuel load rather than wait for the big one that cannot be controlled). The second is logging to remove much of the fuel load, but unfortunately logging also has its own environmental problems. A tertiary mitigation method that is seldom deliberately used due to cost (but is sometimes incidentally used by way of peripheral agricultural areas) is clearing a wide swath around communities and then controlling the grass fuel load with controlled burns.

Climate change will affect the boreal forest: its boundaries will shift somewhat northward, but the nature of regenerative burns will remain wherever the boreal forest remains. Regardless of climate change, the only way communities surrounded by boreal forests can reduce the risk of being destroyed by fire is to make greater efforts in reducing the fuel load surrounding inhabited areas.

When you hear of a boreal area having a bad year of fires, remember that the longer the period between fires, the greater the eventual fire will be.

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Fort McMurray is the support city for the Oil Sands Industry. The city itself has grown from a small town to a city of 80000+ in the last 50+ years

Almost all of the Oil Sands are North of the City and once you get somewhat north of the city the forests are not nearly as dense as around Fort McMurray and in many areas the area where the oil sands are don’t have that much vegetation.

Fort McMurray itself is surrounded by forests. The city itself is actually quite scenic with all the forests around it.

From what I can tell, the fire started south of the city and with the winds and unusually dry spring, it started a fire storm and overwhelmed the local firefighting efforts despite having 500 firefighters on this blaze.

The city of Fort McMurray itself has many different sections. The original section of the downtown area ( in the valley) was mostly spared from the fire. What got burned was mostly the newer areas of town which were developed after the downtown area was filled up.

These mostly outlying are the areas that are being shown as being devastated by the fire in the pictures and videos.

As mentioned in other posts, there is basically only one highway out of Fort McMurray, Highway 63.

Going north leads to the oil sands (and the huge semi-permanent camps there, originally built for the construction workers but are also used for housing many of the maintenance and other workers there.

These camps are almost like another city in a way. From what I can tell, some of the people evacuating north yo the camps had to also flee these camps when they were threatened by the fire as well.

Going south eventually leads to Edmonton. The highway 63 south (all 241 km of it) until is reaches other highways only has 2 small towns for refueling/rest stops.

With all the people evacuating and all their big fuel thirty trucks, it is no surprise that both places ran out of fuel.

Another thing that is somewhat unusual about Fort McMurray is that its population is mostly people from other area (Newfoundland is very common) and it has quite the diversity on population.

Generally, most things there cost significantly more that other areas of Canada so even though the salaries and income is high, the costs of living there is also high and as you can see, fire burns expensive houses as well as cheaper trailers. (To give an example, a 3 bedroom apartment that I stayed in as student (back in 1990) would rent for $2500/month in 2016. A similar rental in Edmonton would be closer to $1000

This fire also occurred at a time when the city was suffering from the drop in oil price and many positions being eliminated even though production at these oil sands plants is still on the increase.

From what I can tell, the fire has not affected any of the oil sands facilities (aside from not having the people there to run it) and in my opinion, it is unlikely that this fire would affect their operations for the most part just because these faculties were set up to be fire resistant.

The other thing that is unusual about Fort McMurray is that the nearest big city is Edmonton (431 km to my parent’s house in Edmonton - when I was living there) Aside from the other small towns in the area, there is virtually no other large population center anywhere close so the city is quite isolated.

As for other historic fires, I was just reading about another fire in Canada, the 1950 Chinchagua fire in Northern Alberta where smoke from it caused trouble in Toronto and traces of the smoke even reached Europe:eek:

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Actually the camps to the north have not been threatened by fire. The initial evacuation centres that themselves had to be evacuated due to fire risk were in Anzac. The northern camps are being evacuated for logistical reasons - they’re cut off and at risk of running out of food etc, though at this point support traffic on 63 is getting through at least sporadically. Still, the camps are not in a position to support the evacuees, and it is much better to get them south to major cities where support infrastructure is vastly superior.

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Going slightly off topic, these oil sands are transported by heavy hauling trucks

When Syncrude was first in operation, they asked Caterpillar what their largest haul truck was.

Caterpillar proudly says their model 777 has a capacity of 200 tons

Syncrude (feigning disappointment) says that they will take that model but they really could use an even bigger truck. :smiley:

This (as well as other mining demands) caused Caterpillar to design and build an even larger truck . This caused them to build the model 797 with a capacity of 370+ tons which is what they currently use and if there was an even bigger truck available, they would use it but that currently seems to be the limit for various reasons.

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Thanks, I assumed that they were threatened by the fire but I stand corrected

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One of the strangest things about these evacuations is just how few people (as a percentage of the evacuees) actually require these temporary shelters.

Most of the evacuees have friends or relatives that they can stay at (at least for a short period of time) and so these evacuation centers end up with less people than they originally anticipate. (which is a good thing):cool:

I can see this happening already with the Alberta premier Rachel Notley asking for the evacuees to let the authorities know where they are at.

I suspect that this is because they are getting less people at the Northlands Expo
(old Agricom) than they anticipated.

If you listen to the interviews of the people leaving, you will see that virtually every one interviewed is going to another family or friend’s place and not the evacuation center.

To give you an example, I don’t live in Fort McMurray anymore but if I was still there and had to leave, I could go to either of my brother’s places, or my aunt’s or my parents just to start off the top of my head.

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My past comments on Alberta, the oil industry, and climate change denial have been pretty critical but right now I just feel terrible for the double misfortune they’re enduring – first, the sudden and precipitous drop in oil prices that’s devastated the local economy, and now these terrible wildfires.

On the subject of donations, a few agencies were already mentioned, and I just wanted to say I was at the liquor store today here in Ontario and the LCBO is taking donations, presumably province-wide. I think you have your choice of $5 or $10 but there may be other options. The province itself and the feds are offering all kinds of assistance too, of course.

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Some of the adjusters we work with are getting ready to go up next week and start surveying the damage. Drake international is advertising for labourers for demolition crews (two weeks in, one week out) so I assume they have been called in since it is going to be a huge project, I don’t know what restoration contractors are going to be managing it. I doubt there is much extra capacity from provincial restoration companies, I know we cant afford to send anybody.

I got a call from another carpenter friend a couple days ago who is really struggling. He is a very highly skilled premium rate contractor but things are really slow here. We already had the influx of out of work construction crews from Fort Mac last spring. Now there are going to be quite a few displaced workers who wont be going back the the Fort for some time. I am hoping the rebuilding can get underway soon as there are lots of construction workers in the province that can really use the work. I suspect a small boom for ATCO and other camp trailer companies to provide housing so Suncor and others can get back to producing.

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The fire will likely reach the Saskatchewan border by midnight tonight.
Fort McMurray wildfire heading for Saskatchewan border

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It should be noted that the direction it is headed is utterly uninhabited. I suppose there may be a couple fly-in fishing lodges or something, but the nearest community is La Loche, far, far to the east and south, and on the other side of a lake. Saw a BBC headline saying “Second Canadian province threatened by wildfire,” which, while technically true, is not exactly cause for concern.

Of greater note is the northwest portion of the fire encroaching onto the Suncor mining site but officials seem remarkably unconcerned about that, likely because strip mines aren’t particularly susceptible to burning down.

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There’s no immediate danger to Saskatchewan communities, but officials are talking about the possibility of this fire going on for months. At the speed it’s moving, it wouldn’t take all that long for the fire to get to La Loche without a good rain to stop it. Peter Pond Lake is big but the fire can still go around it. Access-wise, La Loche is similar to Fort Mac in that it has only one road going in from the south, and through to the north, so they have to be careful about not getting trapped there. I don’t think Saskatchewan fire officials are feeling too comfortable about it.

One reason that oil operations are considered safe is because wide swaths of forest have been cut around them as firebreaks. Communities are going to have to consider doing that as well.

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I have several Facebook friends in the Twin Cities, and they have observed that the air there is very smoky. However, that smoke is from other fires in northern Minnesota. AFAIK, those too are in uninhabited areas and are relatively contained.

As for my earlier donations, I tried to donate online but for some reason the sites wouldn’t accept my credit card, so I decided to do it the old-fashioned way. I half expect to start getting Canadian junk mail in the weeks or months to come. :o

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As always, Astro Bob at the Duluth (MN) News Tribune has a good explanation of the effects of the smoke in the northern US. His pictures of the street lights in Duluth looks like there’s fog. Also watch his link to a video, especially to the end when an evacuee looks back at the cloud of smoke.

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NoFrills has started taking donations for the Red Cross–just add it to your grocery bill.

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Interesting As It Happens article: Fort McMurray: Why is Ottawa only matching donations to the Red Cross?

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Correction: La Loche is on Lac La Loche. Peter Pond Lake is a hundred kms to the south.

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That’s not really a terribly informative article. It doesn’t even try to explain why the federal government is only matching Red Cross donations (although it doesn’t take a lot of guesses to probably arrive at the correct answer.) It just has one person’s opinion that it’s Not A Good Thing.

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Isn’t it because there are a lot of religious organizations raising money too, and the government isn’t going to want to match that funding only to discover they intend to spend it on bibles?

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I believe this response from the Red Cross at the end of the As It Happens transcript anwers the question:

It must be more effective and efficient to have one body directing relief efforts and allocating money where it’s needed rather than have a hodgepodge of independent groups that might work against each other or assume overlapping responsibilities, especially in the chaos of the first few days of a disaster. I assume that the experience and know-how of the Red Cross make it the logical choice to be that one body.

Ralph Goodale also gives the government’s rationale for its decision. I think Kate Bahen is absolutely wrong when she says it’s a political decision, as if the government is playing favourites.

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I heard yesterday on “As It Happens” that Fort McMurray is about 85 to 90% unburned; however, how many people will actually want to move back is an unknown factor because the area’s economy has been rapidly deteriorating with the reduction in oil prices.

Samaritan’s Purse and Habitat for Humanity are both organizations run by Christians and both do varying amounts of evangelism. Now, IDK how all this works in Canada, but I’m guessing that the Red Cross gave that money to those organizations for services they could not provide AND with the caveat that it ONLY be used for those services.