Canadian fire insanity

[Jefe's AR]

[Jefe's AR]

[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



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

https://youtu.be/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.