Officials fear massive Alberta wildfire could double in size

[rooster59]

Officials fear massive Alberta wildfire could double in size

RACHEL LA CORTE, Associated Press
ROB GILLIES, Associated Press


EDMONTON, Alberta (AP) — Canadian officials fear a massive wildfire could double in size by the end of Saturday as they continue to evacuate residents of fire-ravaged Fort McMurray from work camps north of Alberta's oil sands city.

Thousands more displaced residents will get a sobering drive-by view of their burned out city as convoys continue Saturday.

Police and military will oversee another procession of hundreds of vehicles, and the mass airlift of evacuees will also resume. A day after 8,000 people were flown out, authorities said 5,500 more were expected to be evacuated by the end of Friday and another 4,000 on Saturday.

More than 80,000 people have left Fort McMurray in the heart of Canada' oil sands, where the fire has torched 1,600 homes and other buildings. The mass evacuation forced as much as a quarter of Canada's oil output offlineand is expected to impact a country already hurt by a dramatic fall in the price of oil.

The Alberta provincial government, which declared a state of emergency, said Friday the size of the blaze had grown to 101,000 hectares (249,571 acres) or about 1,000 square kilometers (386 square miles). No deaths or injuries were reported.

Chad Morrison, Alberta's manager of wildfire prevention, said there was a "high potential that the fire could double in size" by the end of Saturday. He expected the fire to expand into a more remote forested area northeast and away from Fort McMurray. Extremely dry conditions and a hot temperature of 27 Celsius (81 Fahrenheit) was expected Saturday along with strong winds, he said.

Morrison said no amount of resources would put this fire out, and what was needed was rain.

"We have not seen rain in this area for the last two months of significance," Morrison said. "This fire will continue to burn for a very long time until we see some significant rain."

Environment Canada forecast a 40 percent chance of showers in the area on Sunday. Morrison said cooler conditions were expected Sunday and Monday.

About 1,200 vehicles had passed through Fort McMurray by late Friday afternoon despite a one-hour interruption due to heavy smoke, authorities said.

Jim Dunstan was in the convoy with his wife, Tracy, and two young sons. "It was shocking to see the damaged cars all burned on the side of the road. It made you feel lucky to get out of there," he said.

In Edmonton, between 4,500 and 5,000 evacuees arrived at the airport on at least 45 flights Friday, airport spokesman Chris Chodan said. In total, more than 300 flights have arrived with evacuees since Tuesday, he said.

A group that arrived late Friday afternoon was greeted by volunteers who handed out bottled water and helped direct people where to go next.

Among them was Chad Robertson, a fuel truck driver who was evacuated from Husky Energy's Sunrise project, northeast of Fort McMurray. He said that when the fire started, even though the flames were relatively far away, "everyone started panicking."

Robertson said he had plans to go to a friend's house in Edmonton before heading home to Nova Scotia.

Scott Burrell, from Kelowna, British Columbia, was waiting with others in an airport terminal that had been repurposed for evacuees who were resting and waiting for flights. He said he was working for a scaffolding company at a plant called Fort Hills when the fire broke out Tuesday.

"We were working overtime and I just saw what looked like a massive cloud in the sky, but I knew it was fire," he said. "The very next day was my day to go home. Ends up we weren't going home that day."

Burrell and others were evacuated by plane Friday, after spending three days with families who arrived at the work camp because they were evacuated from their towns. He said he and other workers rationed food to help the families who were coming in, and some offered up their living spaces.

Burrell planned to catch a flight back to British Columbia.

About 25,000 evacuees moved north in the hours after Tuesday's mandatory evacuation, where oil sands work camps that usually house employees were used to house evacuees. But the bulk of the more than 80,000 evacuees fled south to Edmonton and elsewhere, and officials are moving everyone south where it is safer and they can get better support services. The convoy was stopped for an hour because of smoke.

Police were escorting 50 vehicles at a time, south through the city itself on Highway 63 at a distance of about 20 kilometers (12.4 miles) south and then releasing the convoy. At that point another convoy of 50 cars begins.

All intersections along the convoy route have been blocked off and evacuees are not being allowed back to check on their homes in Fort McMurray. The city is surrounded by wilderness, and there are essentially only two ways out via road.

Fanned by high winds, scorching heat and low humidity, the fire grew from 75 square kilometers (29 square miles) Tuesday to 100 square kilometers (39 square miles) on Wednesday, but by Thursday it was almost nine times that — at 850 square kilometers (330 square miles). That's an area roughly the size of Calgary, Alberta's largest city.

The fire was so large that smoke from the fair is blanketing parts of the neighboring province of Saskatchewan where Environment Canada has issued special air quality statements for several areas.

The region has the third-largest reserves of oil in the world behind Saudi Arabia and Venezuela.

Greg Pardy, an analyst with RBC Capital Markets, said that as much as 1 million barrels a day of oil may be offline, based on oil company announcements. That's just over a third of Canada's total oil sands output, Pardy noted.

-- (c) Associated Press 2016-05-07

[shirtless]

Officials should have done their job and back burned fuel from past seasons ,

[HaleySabai]

You don't have a clue.

[shirtless]

Coming from Australia , i seen more bush fires than i can count,

[soc]

Remember the Canberra bushfires?

Caused by a build up of fuel(dead wood)on the forest floor, which was allowed to accumulate because the politically correct greenys wouldn't allow back burning.

These idiots should be prosecuted for all the devastation that they caused.

[AYJAYDEE]

Officials should have done their job and back burned fuel from past seasons ,

you obviously have no concept of the type and size of forests this fire is located in! ths isnt some "bush" fire pal, its a full blown FOREST fire.and this forest stretches for 5500 km! big difference

Edited May 7, 2016 by AYJAYDEE

[shirtless]

Officials should have done their job and back burned fuel from past seasons ,

you obviously have no concept of the type and size of forests this fire is located in! ths isnt some "bush" fire pal, its a full blown FOREST fire.and this forest stretches for 5500 km! big difference

No of course coming from Australia we classify a bbq as a bush fire,

[AYJAYDEE]

Officials should have done their job and back burned fuel from past seasons ,

you obviously have no concept of the type and size of forests this fire is located in! ths isnt some "bush" fire pal, its a full blown FOREST fire.and this forest stretches for 5500 km! big difference

No of course coming from Australia we classify a bbq as a bush fire,

bush is the defining word. canada has TREES.

[gandalf12]

Officials should have done their job and back burned fuel from past seasons ,

you obviously have no concept of the type and size of forests this fire is located in! ths isnt some "bush" fire pal, its a full blown FOREST fire.and this forest stretches for 5500 km! big difference

No of course coming from Australia we classify a bbq as a bush fire,

bush is the defining word. canada has TREES.

And lots of them. I worked up there recently and trees is one thing they are not short of. Feel sorry for the people in Fort McMurray but as a town it is damn depressing

[soc]

Officials should have done their job and back burned fuel from past seasons ,

you obviously have no concept of the type and size of forests this fire is located in! ths isnt some "bush" fire pal, its a full blown FOREST fire.and this forest stretches for 5500 km! big difference

No of course coming from Australia we classify a bbq as a bush fire,

bush is the defining word. canada has TREES.

lts called the "bush", but its comprised of trees & bushes & grass etc.

The trees down the bottom of WA are the second highest in the world after the Californian Redwoods.

The gum trees of Victoria are very large also, thicker than Canadian pine trees.

They are also chock full of flammable eucalyptus oil.

When we are allowed to backburn or doze firebreaks, we can control "bush"fires.

Shirtless is right, pal, the Canadian authorities should have at least constructed firebreaks.

[HaleySabai]

Aussie-land does have regular nasty"bush" fires just as Canada has a designated 'fire-season' with around 1,400 annual wildfires in Alberta alone.

But this wildfire raging now in Fort Mac. is considered a rare phenomena of wildfire created by a perfect storm. Starting with a dry winter,quick spring melt,unseasonal high-temps heating-up before the deciduous trees had sprouted leaves.The forest itself is a vast swath of mature-aging conifers(spruce,pine,fir et..)that pile-up the "fuel" on the forest floor, add wind and spark..whola!..."The Beast"....moving at incredible speeds and burning so hot that trees are literally exploding,at this point only Mother Nature,who created it, will be able to put it out with rain.

As with many others I too wondered why a 1-2km fire-line around the towns parameter would not of been in the budget,surely a fraction to maintain(god knows they have the money up there) than what this disaster is going to cost in property and economic losses.

Apparently a fire of this magnitude is capable of jumping 2kms,it did in fact get across the 1km wide river that skirts the town.The officials are saying it's unlikely that any degree of safe guard would of stopped the town from burning.

Yes,Fort Mac is a depressing place,being the hub of industrial slavery. Got a whole lot more depressed in the new year with the crash of oil prices....and now this.

Not to sound facetious or ill-willed but,with the massive development of the oil-sands over the last 15yrs,turning the Wood Buffalo region into an environmental wasteland as billions upon billions of $$ have been injected and extracted from the natural terrain.

So now, that dynamic duo, Nature and Reality, the actual owners of the planet, have showed up to read the riot act to the renters throwing a wild party.

We have harnessed nature and even think we can 'control' her.....in the end she all-ways gets the final say.

Im due back to Edmonton early June......

[AYJAYDEE]

Lol! All these fire suppression experts opining tthat all that would have been required is some back burning and dozed firebreaks to stop this baby! the Athabasca river is huge and a better break than man can build and this fire jumped it without batting an eye! As for building them ahead of time? lol. A 1/2 km wide firebreak around every town in a forest 5500 km long by 1000 km wide?? lol!!

[soc]

Better pray for rain, or the wind reverses direction.

[HaleySabai]

Its difficult to conceptualize the size and volume of the Canadian Boreal forest - "massive" is a mild understatement. Even though I'm born & raised in that part of the world,but since living in this part of the world (ChiangMai) where its normal to co-exist like rats...eyeball to eyeball,a sense of space on that scale boggles the mind. The fire has been reported on Thai-tv and some people have asked me about it.

I tell them that the fire has now apparently doubled in size to approx. 2,000sq.km....the size of ChiangMai province is 2,900sq.km, that kind of blows their mind... or that Alberta,the province the fire is burning in, is the size of both Thailand and Laos put together!....and there are 10 provinces in Canada.

Without taking account of the real estate involved, I clearly forget the impracticalities of "burn-back" or even the maintenance involved in keeping clear a wide fire break around a "city"- one would think at least it may give a fighting chance and it might, but if thats all you have between your house and several hundred K of wildfire.....well,better just RUN!

Sadly this story has played out its destruction several times in other communities around the Province.The moral may just be ; If you gonna build a living arrangement in the heart of the Boreal forest then best have insurance up the rear-end and an exit-plan out the front-end.....there just ain't no real full protection from "the Boreal Beast".

[AYJAYDEE]

Its difficult to conceptualize the size and volume of the Canadian Boreal forest - "massive" is a mild understatement. Even though I'm born & raised in that part of the world,but since living in this part of the world (ChiangMai) where its normal to co-exist like rats...eyeball to eyeball,a sense of space on that scale boggles the mind. The fire has been reported on Thai-tv and some people have asked me about it.

I tell them that the fire has now apparently doubled in size to approx. 2,000sq.km....the size of ChiangMai province is 2,900sq.km, that kind of blows their mind... or that Alberta,the province the fire is burning in, is the size of both Thailand and Laos put together!....and there are 10 provinces in Canada.

Without taking account of the real estate involved, I clearly forget the impracticalities of "burn-back" or even the maintenance involved in keeping clear a wide fire break around a "city"- one would think at least it may give a fighting chance and it might, but if thats all you have between your house and several hundred K of wildfire.....well,better just RUN!

Sadly this story has played out its destruction several times in other communities around the Province.The moral may just be ; If you gonna build a living arrangement in the heart of the Boreal forest then best have insurance up the rear-end and an exit-plan out the front-end.....there just ain't no real full protection from "the Boreal Beast".

the mountain pine beetle has caused the death of most of the pine between the american border and the yukon in BC. that dead standing timber is going to light one day and the world has never seen a fire like what will occur.