Just wanted to shout out to any of you guys working or living in Alberta......keep safe. From what I am seeing on the news, it is a terrible loss for so many families. Let's pray for lots of rain.
I saw where they reactivated the last Martian Mars water bomber to help fight the fire....thoughts and prayers for those in harms way Ed
My understanding is that the fire is pretty much past Anzac and Fort Mac now. There are some sat photo's showing it now. The reports today are that it roughly 10 000 hectares. There isn't anything in it's current path , assuming that doesn't change, but the weather forecast doesn't predict weather that will help extinguish it either. http://globalnews.ca/video/2683351/...utm_medium=MostPopularVideo&utm_campaign=2016 http://globalnews.ca/news/2684778/f...icle&utm_medium=MostPopular&utm_campaign=2014 What Brian Jean said in an interview today was that all infrastructure was saved. Water plant, hospital, airport, and all schools. Tough to get a real tally on how many homes were lost. I've heard numbers anywhere from 10% to 20%. It really is a moving target. There may have been 1 life lost- I thought on a radio update they said a firefighters daughter was lost. They do project the fire to double in size tomorrow.
My brother in-law is a pipe fitter out there, and he has a similar video to the fire storm. He made it to his son's in Calgary, and got a flight back here to New Brunswick. Both his boys live out there and my sister is beside herself with worry. The nephew that lives in Calgary almost bought a home in Fort Mac, but decided on Calgary instead.
I live roughly 6 hours south of there. I've never personally been there. All my closest friends are from there. House prices up there literally exploded about 12 years ago. Good money, but high expenses too. I like the bush myself, different outposts. As long as I have access to the bare necessities, I'm quite content out in the middle of nowhere. Unfortunately as has been well documented the last couple days, Fort Mac really has almost nothing for roads to service it. My cousin and his wife were originally told to evacuate to the north. After sitting in traffic for 2 hours, they were then redirected south through the fire. From there it took 24 hours to get back to Edmonton. I just watched a video Global posted from one homeowner showing his house going up in flames on security camera. He watched the whole thing on his phone as it happened.
I'm about 10 hours south from the Mac. My heart goes out to all directly affected.
Facebook posts are saying it's raining in Fort Mac. I haven't heard if it's significant. What I've read is it is either headed for Saskatchewan, or now in it's borders, so I hope they are getting rain too. Last I read last night was that the fire was expected to reach 200 000 hectares in size. That's a monster gathering steam and I hope there isn't anything threatened by it. I thought they also said on the news 2 fires merged and were making it's way across the Peace area
Ed, sorry to say that is incorrect. The Martin Mars was not reactivated at all. The report that was circulating was from 2011, so not valid in this case. There are things in the fire's current path for sure. The fire is moving in several different directions at this time, and one of those directions is North, towards several oilseeds facilities. The fire is currently burning on Suncor property though there is no immediate threat to the plant. There was a school under construction that was reported to have burned, and some reports claimed a firehall under construction had burned as well, but that I am unsure of. The firefighter's daughter was the daughter of a Deputy Chief. She and her cousin were killed in an accident with a fuel tanker. So,in fact, there were two lives lost, but they were 250km south, so some consider the accident not to be part of the evacuation. To me, it doesn't matter where the accident happened, or if it was part of the evacuation, as the loss of life occurred, and that is a tragedy no matter what the circumstances.
Bit of background about the Martin Mars: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/martin-mars-water-bomber-fort-mcmuray-1.3571558
I'm about 3 hours south of Fort Mac in Fort Saskatchewan. If the wind is blowing towards us, we get the smoke but we're a long way from the fire. Depending on which way they go, we're on the route from Fort Mac to Edmonton (closest major city) and it's incredible how many vehicles it takes to move 80,000 people. The highway out of there was bumper to bumper for 2 days. All the hotels are full, lots of new faces in town for sure. We had a little rain early this morning, but nothing to make an impact on the fire. At least the wind died down a bit. It's going to be a long time before those people get back into their homes again. Schools out for their kids too. Oil production for that area is about 2 million barrels a day I believe. It's already been cut down to about half that. Fort Mac feeds 2 major refineries in this area, they'll shut down without feed stock. The good old ripple effect.
Need a plow line with a hundred D9's it looks like the terrain isn't kansas flat though. Fire is natural, maybe it'll be good for the local vegetation? Hopefully they get everyone out of the way. Lots of rebuilding to get done in the aftermath.
It would be nice if a fire line was an option, but the ground is not flat, and is made up of a lot of muskeg, so it just won't support the dozers to make a big enough line, fast enough.
Indeed, its a heck of a no win situation, even with every fire tanker, trying to establish a line in unfavorable conditions is a nightmare. Maybe a few aging MOAB's and a Red Adair solution?
My cousin posted pictures of CAT's being hauled in when the evacuation was called. He was stuck in traffic at the time so I assume they came from one of the mines.
There are several dozers from several different mines working in and around the city. They can do limited work, but a wholesale fire line around the city in a quick fashion isn't a possibility. They are basically cutting rough lines among the subdivisions and widening any fire breaks that are already existing.
The last figure I heard was 161,000 hectares. The oilsands are pretty much shut down and gas prices will probably go up do to the loss of 1,000,000 barrels/day not coming from the oilsands. I'm in Edmonton and the company I work for was granted essential status and is open round the clock in Ft Mac with a limited crew to supply fire fighters and first responders. They have a new 115,000 sq ft warehouse they opened last year and took up 3 truck loads of supplies last week.
I heard that other countries have offered help and equipment, even the Russian bear. Our fearless leaders figure we are doing fine.
Yair . . . Northern hemisphere fires in conifers are way out of my knowledge zone but looking at those fires and the ember storms it looks to me as though it would be a good start to get the timber on the ground . . .fart assing around with dozers blade cutting fire lines in such conditions I imagine would do diddley squat. Six pairs of D10's in staggered formation with six hundred feet of chain between each pair would put a four hundred yard strip on the ground at three or four mph . . . it would still burn but if used strategically way out in front of the projected spread of the fire front it would give waterbombers an edge to work to. As others have mentioned the ground conditions may preclude this approach but I have seen it work on a smaller scale in thickly timbered country. Cheers.
Fire lines help immensely, and are far from doing diddley squat. They allow breaks from the wall of flame advancing. The blowing embers are created by the storm of fire, and if you can stop or slow the immense fire balls, you cut way back on the embers and the fire spread. Even with the embers blowing, it's easier to tackle the small fires as they start in advance of the main fire body, so the control is greatly improved. As for the six pairs of D10s with chain in between them, there are a few issues with that concept here. First, the ground conditions will not support simply driving anything that big across the land without sinking it every 500 or so feet. Second, the time it would take to procure and ship in the chain would be prohibitive. It's not readily available here, and the fires would be long over by the time it arrived. Third, the learning curve to do the job safely and efficiently, should all the resources be available, would be far too steep. Sending operators out in front of a fire, moving as fast as this one, with no experience in the job they are performing, would be asking to kill someone.
Yair . . . Gotcha alco . . . . I did point out my comments were qualified. I have had a lot to do with fires in Eucalypt forests and, in the conditions shown in the extensive news coverage we are getting from the disaster in your country I again make the observation that a dozer fire line does diddley squat when a fire is topping out. It does allow access though for backburning and, if properly timed and with a bit of luck, a backburn can be drawn towards the fire face by the back draught of the conflagration . . . dicey stuff that I have managed on a couple of occasions. I certainly understand what you are saying about the ground conditions and logistics involved My point was that it generally is not recognised that it makes a significant difference to a advancing fire front in virgin forest if the timber is on the ground rather standing forty or fifty feet tall and creating an updraft and embers from the wind blown vertical fire burning well above the ground. As one of the very few people who have actually seen the fire taming affect of pulling a couple of strips across a fire front and putting the fuel on the ground, I mentioned it here out of general interest. Trust by now this catastrophe is winding down and all is well with you and yours. Cheers.
The fire crossed a river so I think in a huge fire like this, there's not much that's going to stop it but you can maybe slow it down a bit. I had a fire go through my property a few years ago and when the embers are jumping 100 feet at a time from tree top to tree top you best get out of there. The weather plays a big role in helping to get a fire under control. If the wind is the wrong way will spread the fire fast. Wind and especially rain on your side is usually what lets them get a huge fire under control. This fire is still burning and they said it could be for another couple of weeks. The only good thing is it's not heading toward any populated area's.
I read a few articles explaining the oilsand itself shouldn't be combustible (like coal), but isn't there a lot of peat moss up there? Any reason that wouldn't burn underground for years? I know it did on the neighbours farm.
A lot of the work is going back over the area putting out hot spots. A lot of that is done with heavy equipment.
Fatgraderman, had a brush fire down the road one spring years ago, caught the muck on fire.......burnt for months. The fire dept gave up on it, had a heck of a hole when it was done. Ed
90% of that is done by hand.
Yep. Same on the neighbours. Nobody could do anything with it. It just had to burn itself out. Then afterwards the ground was like moguls.
The Opal fire that went through my property, they brought in excavators to dig up hot spots and clear and stack burnt tree's. Sustainable Resources are in charge of Wildfires and I expect they'd be doing similar to what they did for the Opal fire. There were a lot of people pumping water and 2 water bladders were set up in my parking lot. I heard they strung out over 2 miles of hose soaking hot spots. It's important to spend the time to put out hot spots. There was a fire in Sturgeon County several years ago where that county decided there wasn't much risk of hot spots flaring up and no longer required the services of Sustainable Resources. Bad mistake trying to save money, the fire flared up again from a hot spot after SRD had left. Most of the people working with SRD are from one of the native bands and the money goes to the band.
Here it comes again. The fire is once again causing full evacuation of all people in town except emergency services. So all the people trying to get things back into shape so people could return are going to be leaving again. It's also causing mass evacuations of a lot of camps and such north of town.
I heard that last night. Air quality was "38" (on a 1-10???), 4000 being evac'd from camps and the fire could be headed towards Timberlea.
Just said on the radio it did get that one work camp. Sounds like a couple houses blew up in Fort Mac too.
Yep, Blacksands is gone. There was a house explosion in Dickensfield, and it damaged 6 or 7 other houses. They also lost a 4 plex to fire in Thickwood, and it damaged 3 other units.
Hoping that the 2 days of rain we've had, and the 2 more forecasted, help the firefighters get a handle on this "beast".
Any cool wet weather will help but with all that peat (muskeg) it will smolder below the surface for weeks and months on end, there was also a heavy fuel load in that area so it will still take all summer and fall to extinguish hot spots and there will likely be hotspots that smolder through the winter. So even if the 'Beast' is knocked out with favourable weather it will still take a lot of hand work with hoses and portable pumps and hand tools to get at the base of the fire.