Canadian fire insanity

[Great-Kazoo]

Surprised no thread (that i could find with ADVANCE SEARCH) on this crazy fire.


http://www.cnn.com/2016/05/04/world/fort-mcmurray-fire-canada/index.html

evacuation of about 88,000 people, including the entire city of Fort McMurray, 88K trying to fless at one time.

Are they going the wrong way, each side of the road ask of the other. This is why IF something happened and peopel were bugging out The mountains would be the last place we'd be heading.
https://sp.yimg.com/xj/th?id=HR.154961844865&pid=15.1&P=0&w=301&h=169
Unsure of number of folks who fled north. Only to find that 2 lane road was cut off
https://sp.yimg.com/xj/th?id=OIP.Ma0f305f0665e248447ca71063e872cd8o0&pid=15.1&P=0&w=355&h=200

https://sp.yimg.com/xj/th?id=OIP.M2c4fc5bd5857f24da2d705e1af333db0o0&pid=15.1&P=0&w=278&h=186https://sp.yimg.com/xj/th?id=HR.292340041598&pid=15.1&P=0&w=250&h=182

[TheGrey]

I've been following this on Facebook. Wildfire is a terrifying thing- despite the recent snows and such, make sure you have supplies in your vehicle and a viable plan to get out of dodge.

[ray1970]

One hell of a fire, eh.

[HoneyBadger]

After being way too close for comfort to the Black Forest fire, I'm glad I live in the middle of an open farm field out here. Good reason to start talking about preparedness.

[Great-Kazoo]

After being way too close for comfort to the Black Forest fire, I'm glad I live in the middle of an open farm field out here. Good reason to start talking about preparedness.


Who needs to worry about forest fires, when there's earthquakes to watch out for.

[GilpinGuy]

What a situation. Last I checked almost 2000 homes burned. Wow.

[cmailliard]

I was never much into the high speed gardening that is wildland firefighting but was S130/S190 (Basic Wildland Firefighter) certified. The biggest takeaway with wildland or urban interface areas is mitigation. It helps with smaller fires and in bigger fires, firefighters will try to save houses with good mitigation by the homeowner. They perform structure triage, usually even before hand, to determine which houses they will try and save. So do some mitigation.

Next, and this is not just with fire, but get out sooner rather than later. Learn about the hazards near you and develop trigger points for when to evacuate. You may not have time for someone to tell you to leave, so figure it out for yourself.

[Gman]

One hell of a fire, eh.
Yah, eh.

[Circuits]

Aw, soory 'bout yer city burnin' down der, eh?

[Jefe's AR]

http://i.cbc.ca/1.1878878.1380772975!/httpImage/image.jpg_gen/derivatives/16x9_620/li-sctv.jpg

[Jefe's AR]

https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/e3/6f/f6/e36ff6fe4b807aac9be5c7260a9dd23f.jpg

[Jefe's AR]

http://www.founditemclothing.com/itgoesto11/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/bobDougMcKenzie.jpg

[ray1970]

So, like, one of those guys should like drink a bunch of beer, eh. And then put the fire out, eh.

[hollohas]

Watched a video of the evac from one neighborhood. Trees were blowing up right next to the road and people were politely sitting in traffic waiting to get out. They were even hesitant to drive on the wrong side of the road at first. Had to be hot as hell. All I was thinking was, "damn, Canadians really ARE that nice".

In America, people would be freaking out, bulldosing their way through, running each other off the road, causing even worse backups and very likely jamming the road preventing others from getting out safely.

Even though there were 100ft high flames right next to the road, they all patiently evacuated and everyone got out safe. Great study on emergency response and evacuation.

But dang, that fire is nuts. They got zero notice. Unbelievable.

[hollohas]

Here's a few clips from the video. I'll try to find the complete version

https://youtu.be/K5DSwPfiRs8

K5DSwPfiRs8

And a longer version. It looks like hell for a minute there.

https://youtu.be/ieTQvIdG-Vo

ieTQvIdG-Vo

[hollohas]

Next, and this is not just with fire, but get out sooner rather than later. Learn about the hazards near you and develop trigger points for when to evacuate. You may not have time for someone to tell you to leave, so figure it out for yourself.

Any trigger points these folks may have had got breeched in no time at all. The fire went from a contained 29 sq miles on Tuesday, to a partially contained 39 sq miles on Wednesday to a freakish out of control beast of 330 sq miles by early Wednesday. This fire moved in record time.

Folks, that went from a medium sized, mostly contained fire to a fire nearly twice the size of the Hayman fire in a single day. That's insane. It's no wonder these people didn't have time to pack.

I remember thinking the Hayman fire was a freakish, fast moving beast. I was camped north of Lake George the day it started. We saw a tiny bit of smoke and single helo picking up water from Lake George and didn't think much of it. We had pitched camp a long way from that, couldn't even see smoke anymore. That night, trees on the ridge adjacent to our camp started blowing up as the fire climbed the other side of the ridge. Luckly the wind was blowing away from us and the fire didn't come down the ridge.

We were packed and ready to evac at first light. The wind shifted in our direction. We beat feet out of there, through thick smoke back to Lake George. Still didnt think the fire was that big. But we drove back through WP and headed out towards Westcreek. We got stopped by a sheriff deputy before rainbow falls, said we couldn't go through. Guy told us road was closed due to the fire. We were confused at first because westcreek and trout creek had just been let back in from a previous fire evac about a week earlier. We told the deputy that we had already been let back in but he said this closure was due to the new fire. We were shocked and couldn't believe the fire in Lake George, one we just drove by 40 mins earlier, had already almost made it to westcreek. He ended up letting us in to pack up.

Those who lived Teller County then know how big that sucker was. People in Westcreek and Trout creek didn't even have 24 hrs between when the fire started 16 miles away to when they had to evac.

This fire in Canada is TWICE that size. And they are saying it may double again by tomorrow. Insane.

[NFATrustGuy]

I spent the night in Minneapolis last night and left very early (5:30am takeoff) this morning. It was smokey with very limited visibility... Reported at 3 miles. Surprisingly, it didn't smell all that much. I remember when there were fires up the Poudre Canyon it smelled like a campfire forever.

[HoneyBadger]

Wow, those videos are insane. I would be driving across people's yards to get away from that!

[Irving]

I watched the bottom video and gave it a thumbs down and then blasted him on Youtube for the uncalled for swearing.



At 1:25ish you can see a poor bird flying around.