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Canadian wildfire forces evacuation order for entire city
Topic Started: May 4 2016, 07:45 AM (354 Views)
Cymru
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http://www.reuters.com/article/us-canada-wildfire-fortmcmurray-idUSKCN0XU2D8

Quote:
 
Alberta appealed for military help to battle the fire and airlift people from the smoke-filled city after authorities issued a mandatory evacuation order for 80,000, but officials said army and air force assistance would take two days to arrive.
Sounds like the area lacks the necessary resources to deal with this incident.
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Tigger
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Cymru
May 4 2016, 07:45 AM
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-canada-wildfire-fortmcmurray-idUSKCN0XU2D8

Quote:
 
Alberta appealed for military help to battle the fire and airlift people from the smoke-filled city after authorities issued a mandatory evacuation order for 80,000, but officials said army and air force assistance would take two days to arrive.
Sounds like the area lacks the necessary resources to deal with this incident.
Just as well it's only a fire and not a nuclear power plant blowing it's top.

;-)
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Curious Cdn
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Cymru
May 4 2016, 07:45 AM
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-canada-wildfire-fortmcmurray-idUSKCN0XU2D8

Quote:
 
Alberta appealed for military help to battle the fire and airlift people from the smoke-filled city after authorities issued a mandatory evacuation order for 80,000, but officials said army and air force assistance would take two days to arrive.
Sounds like the area lacks the necessary resources to deal with this incident.
It's a long way north. The resources needed to cope with a huge fire like to that are considerable. They are like Hurricanes. An army of pumper trucks asnd firemren won't make a dent in one. I witnessed a big one like this twenty two years ago in the Yukon. It was a hundred miles long, literally. They are awesome natural phenomenon. The travel at the speed of a car on an M road with no traffic on it.

The only way to fight them at all is from the air. The large provinces all maintain fleets of water bombers. As far as I know, Canada is the only country to have designed and built dedicated water bomber aircraft. The Australian version of the wild fire is even worse.

Have you ever had a forest fire on the island off Britain? They must be rare. It is relatively damp. Alberta is a dry place at the best of times but the big El Nino year is creating all sorts of weird conditions but it is a semi-arid region, naturally.

Nearby resources? There is a large Air Force base right near by but it is a fighter base. The "right" kind of aircraft ... large transports, water bombers, heavy lift helicopters are stationed here and there but mostly a long way away. This is a REALLY BIG PLACE , like Russia and the big transport aircraft base is close to 4,000 kms away.
Edited by Curious Cdn, May 5 2016, 03:21 AM.
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Curious Cdn
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Tigger
May 4 2016, 08:16 PM
Cymru
May 4 2016, 07:45 AM
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-canada-wildfire-fortmcmurray-idUSKCN0XU2D8

Quote:
 
Alberta appealed for military help to battle the fire and airlift people from the smoke-filled city after authorities issued a mandatory evacuation order for 80,000, but officials said army and air force assistance would take two days to arrive.
Sounds like the area lacks the necessary resources to deal with this incident.
Just as well it's only a fire and not a nuclear power plant blowing it's top.

;-)
There nearest Canadian reactor is 3,400 kilometers from Fort McMuray. If you can coax a CANDU to "blow up" you are a better man that I , Gunga Din.
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Curious Cdn
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Cymru
May 4 2016, 07:45 AM
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-canada-wildfire-fortmcmurray-idUSKCN0XU2D8

Quote:
 
Alberta appealed for military help to battle the fire and airlift people from the smoke-filled city after authorities issued a mandatory evacuation order for 80,000, but officials said army and air force assistance would take two days to arrive.
Sounds like the area lacks the necessary resources to deal with this incident.
I'm still chucking about the "lack of resources" comment. I wonder if the poster is aware of the irony ... The immediate area around Ft. McMurray (normally) produces 2.2 million barrels of oil per day. The town exists to exploit the World's third largest known reserve of petroleum which is right on their doorstep. "lack of resources" indeed. You should be so lucky. It is significant enough that, because for safety reasons , the oil companys are turning off the taps for a bit and that affected the woirldwide price of oil, today.

Anyway, this is far and away the biggest natural disaster to have hit this country in my lifetime.The fire is the size of one of your small-to-middling old counties.it is so arid, the relative humidity is so low that it rained in Central Alberta TODAY but the rain all evaporated long before it reached the ground.future have been several fires in my memory larger than this one but they have never hit a community this large, before. It is a miracle that no one has been directly killed by the fire, yet.

http://www.cbc.ca/beta/news/canada/edmonton/fort-mcmurray-beacon-hill-evacuation-video-1.3567571

There are many of these dashcam videos circulating now. The one in the above link is pretty chilling but by no means unique.
Edited by Curious Cdn, May 5 2016, 10:20 PM.
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Cymru
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Curious Cdn
May 5 2016, 10:11 PM
Cymru
May 4 2016, 07:45 AM
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-canada-wildfire-fortmcmurray-idUSKCN0XU2D8

Quote:
 
Alberta appealed for military help to battle the fire and airlift people from the smoke-filled city after authorities issued a mandatory evacuation order for 80,000, but officials said army and air force assistance would take two days to arrive.
Sounds like the area lacks the necessary resources to deal with this incident.
I'm still chucking about the "lack of resources" comment. I wonder if the poster is aware of the irony ... The immediate area around Ft. McMurray (normally) produces 2.2 million barrels of oil per day. The town exists to exploit the World's third largest known reserve of petroleum which is right on their doorstep. "lack of resources" indeed. You should be so lucky. It is significant enough that, because for safety reasons , the oil companys are turning off the taps for a bit and that affected the woirldwide price of oil, today.
I never said "lack of resources".
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johnofgwent
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Ok Curious, here's the thing. The only news pictures I have seen seem to focus on a (long) line of cars buses and basically you name it all heading in a fairly orderly fashion down what looks like a fairly decent road ... all travelling away from what seems to be wall-to-wall flame and smoke ...

Has it come to the point where the only solution now reallyis to let it burn itself out and then start again.

If so, and given as you say the area exists solely to tap the oil field, what danger is there of those installations failing and a scene similar to iraq 1991(ish) arising ??

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Curious Cdn
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johnofgwent
May 6 2016, 06:08 AM
Ok Curious, here's the thing. The only news pictures I have seen seem to focus on a (long) line of cars buses and basically you name it all heading in a fairly orderly fashion down what looks like a fairly decent road ... all travelling away from what seems to be wall-to-wall flame and smoke ...

Has it come to the point where the only solution now reallyis to let it burn itself out and then start again.

If so, and given as you say the area exists solely to tap the oil field, what danger is there of those installations failing and a scene similar to iraq 1991(ish) arising ??

There are waterbombers working on this one continuously and they are having little or no effect, as it is do tinder dry that they can't get enough of it on the fire. Those fighting it have declared that only nature casn stop it, now. The old fashioned way of stopping fires like this one is to cut or burn "fire breaks" , that is voids with no fuel that prevent a fire from advancing. This one is too big asnd moving too quickly.

Yes, the orderly evacuation. Something like 100,000 have evacuated and more are likely to do so. Now, if this was going on South of our border, there would be widespread looting, people running through the Sparks with huge, high def. televisions, shootings, people being dragged out of their cars so that the thugs can get out of town. In Alberta, they are stopping to share petrol with stopped strangers. Back in the 1970's, my parents and a quarter of a million others were evacuated suddenly when a whole train full of tanker cars filed with a chlorine solution went of the rails. Nobody knew it at the time but after the crisis was over and they took stiock, there was not one case of looting. None.

The extraction of petroleum from bitumous sands is very different from that of pumping it from the ground under pressure. The material is moved about in huge dump trucks. There is no doubt that fires could do bilions if dollars damage to the huge facilities that extract the petroleum but once the oil on hand is consumed the fires will not be fed from below. There are Iraqi style oilfields in Western Canada but they are further south, not in the forest and likely not in any danger. As a precaution, the oil companies have shut down their pipelines out of the region. The represents a big part the United State's oil supply, something like a quarter to a third of it. They won't be shut down for long.
Edited by Curious Cdn, May 6 2016, 10:32 AM.
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Steve K
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Here's a good pic that seems to show how big and bad it is. A wind change needed? That's often how these things die out. Whatever I hope you get some thing that works and soon

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Cymru
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'Terrifying' Canada Wildfire May Double In Size

http://news.sky.com/story/1691988/terrifying-canada-wildfire-may-double-in-size

Not good.
Edited by Cymru, May 7 2016, 09:56 AM.
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Curious Cdn
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Cymru
May 7 2016, 09:55 AM
'Terrifying' Canada Wildfire May Double In Size

http://news.sky.com/story/1691988/terrifying-canada-wildfire-may-double-in-size

Not good.
Fires this size are not terribly unusual. They are fighting 22 fires in Alberta simultaneously and that isn't horribly unusual, either. What none of us have seen before is a forest fire ripping through a city, before. Except for two who died in a car crash with a tractor trailer during the evacuation, everyone is getting out alive, which is a minor miracle.
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Is it too big a job to create fire breaks between towns and woodland/scrub?
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Curious Cdn
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May 7 2016, 11:57 AM
Is it too big a job to create fire breaks between towns and woodland/scrub?
Yes it is too big a fire, travelling too rapidly. The Athabaska River is quite wide (you can see it snaking through the aireal photos. Is is about the width of the Thames at East London) and they thought that it would act as a fire break tomorotect the town but the fire jumped it, propelled by high winds.

These fires are a natural phenomenon, by the way. It took quite a while for us to realize that, as well. The dominant species of conifer seen in those photos of the Canadian mountains and the North in general all require forest fires to reproduce. Their (rather large) seed cones need to be roasted, literally, before they will open and germinate. Also, without fires, the floral species mix changes, and not necessarily for the better. The animal life seems to survive these massive burns. I have no idea how.

Anyway, for a hundred years, we went to extraordinary lenghths to fight forest fires. We had systems of fire watch towers all across the country. I even know someone who manned one in the Rocky Mountains. She is an heavy duty Zen Buddhist and the isolation and solitude of manning a fire tower was just the ticket, for her. Remote sensing from space rendered that job obsolete, pretty damned quick. The net result of going to heroic efforts to stop forest fires is that the first filled with flammable detritous over the century and it made the fires that much more vigorous. The best laid plans of mice and men ...

I had mentioned in an above post that I had witnessed a forest fire a hundred miles long in July in the Yukon a couple of decades back. It was still burning a bit when I drove through it . The tarmac on the road was orange with fire retardant that had been dropped from the air, probably by helicopters dropping huge swimming pool seized bladders worth on the fires. Fires are common and natural and the Territorial flower of the Yukon is the fire weed and they are everywhere. We get a lot of German tourists in the West ot and North if Canada. It seems to be one of their preferred destinations. A comment commonly heard in the touristy places of the Yukon in their short ( but extremely pleasant) summer from them is how all of the bright fire weed reminds them of their cities, a few decades back.
Edited by Curious Cdn, May 7 2016, 01:57 PM.
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