Alberta town on fire

Hey guys, I'm not sure how many of you are aware, but there's a major disaster happening in Alberta right now. There are a couple major wildfires burning and the city of Fort McMurray (about 5 hours North of me) was completely evacuated Tuesday night, which means 70,000 people have been displaced for an unknown period of time. Alberta has declared a state of emergency.

There are still people stranded without fuel and supplies, as some escaped with only the clothes on their back and have no home to go back to. As of 10:15AM yesterday the government reported 1600 structures lost or damaged. If you want more information Google Fort McMurray Fire and you'll see the latest. Private citizens are going up with carloads of fuel and supplies for stranded evacuees.

If any of you have a spare bucks, Alberta could really use it. The Red Cross is the best place to donate.

If you don't care to donate, please keep us in your prayers.

http://www.redcross.ca/

I have seen this on the news, very scarey for all those who it has effected! We have fores arelound here hut nothing that out of hand! Our thoughts are with them!

Check out this video of people leaving: https://youtu.be/ieTQvIdG-Vo

That is terrible, lucky to get out of there alive.

Know the feeling... we've had several big fires here in past few years. In 2011 we had one that burned over 100,000 acres & 1000 homes & in 2015 we had one that burned 4500 acres & 60 homes! When people here see big smoke in the sky... they get very nervous!!! This is a foto from the 1st night of the 2015 fire taken from about 25 miles away. The smoke plume was over 175 miles long!

Hope they get that put out pronto!

BoB

The update today was that they need significant rain before they'll get ahold of it, and there's nothing significant in the 7 day forecast. 88,000+ evacuated. The fire area is 85,000 hectares now.

Tripper said:

Know the feeling... we've had several big fires here in past few years. In 2011 we had one that burned over 100,000 acres & 1000 homes & in 2015 we had one that burned 4500 acres & 60 homes! When people here see big smoke in the sky... they get very nervous!!! This is a foto from the 1st night of the 2015 fire taken from about 25 miles away. The smoke plume was over 175 miles long!

Hope they get that put out pronto!

BoB

Click to expand...

That's quite the photo, Tripper!

We're no stranger to fires, this is one of the more major ones we've seen unfortunately.

05snopro440 said:

That's quite the photo, Tripper!

We're no stranger to fires, this is one of the more major ones we've seen unfortunately.

Click to expand...

Luckily, ours were out in the boonies... yours is right in a big city! That's pretty scary!!!

BoB

05snopro440 said:

Check out this video of people leaving: https://youtu.be/ieTQvIdG-Vo

Click to expand...

That video is nightmarishly unnerving. About a minute in where it's raining glowing embers,fire along the road, and everyone is stuck in slow moving traffic - it would be real hard to keep it together like they are.

Pray it rains.

Yeah, scary stuff there......hard to believe they could even breath
hope lives are spared.......

Just got an update on the fire, they are saying from Wednesday at noon till noon today the fire has grown from 25000 acres to 210,000, and there is no rain forecast for over a week.

DozerII said:

Just got an update on the fire, they are saying from Wednesday at noon till noon today the fire has grown from 25000 acres to 210,000, and there is no rain forecast for over a week.

Click to expand...

Yep. They said the only thing that can help them stop it is rain. The water bombers are "like spitting on a campfire".

Not Good

Good thoughts going your way.!
Stay safe!!!

Hope it gets better. good thought going your way.

Makes building a rat rod seem trivial when your home and maybe even your life is threatened by a raging fire. I hope everyone stays safe.

Pretty sad time for sure. I've spent many years working in northern Alberta and one of the worst things I seen was the destruction of the Slave Lake fire back in 2011. It was like a war zone with all the houses and building burnt. Ft Mac appears to be much worse, I can only imagine what those people are going through. I wonder if Mercurymac is being effected by these fires.

I've been lucky Gunz, we live directly west of Ft McMurray, but about 400 miles away, and the prevailing winds up here are westerlies. There is a funny shaped chunk of prairie straddling the Peace river and some of it's tributaries, and forest fires don't do well on the prairie, but I live in the bush at the edge of that little prairie.
You know, Saskatchewan is directly east of Fort McMurray and fairly close too.

Thank you for the concern shown, Gunz, but I'm all right at the moment,------- well, I do feel a little lazy, but,------

Glad to hear only one death so far, all my best wishes for everyone in that area, that sounds kinda weak but I will keep you in my thoughts.

The generosity of everyone in the province, country, and even further is so amazing and great to see!

Other than a few (a$$holes) that are making comments of it being Karma, this has been bringing a huge community of caring people together to rally around this devastating event.

The scope of this disaster is hard to grasp just from news video - ariel shots give one a feeling of how tiny we really are when the forces of nature come to bear. After hearing some of the personal stories, it brings home the fact that Fort Mac has been a huge economic driver not just for Alberta, but for the whole of Canada - people from all over the country have been employed there for many years. Despite the current negative effect of low oil prices, Fort Mac will bounce back - if there is a silver lining in this, it is that once this awful scene plays itself out, the rebuilding could actually help the economy.