Guest essay by Eric Worrall
The climate vultures are gathering – already attempts are being made to link the out of control Fort McMurray wildfire in Alberta, Canada with “climate change”. But there is something about this disaster which caught my eye – a comment which may hint to a very different reason, why the Fort McMurray wildfire is so out of control.
‘We are in for a rough day’: Fort McMurray wildfire expected to flare up Tuesday afternoon
EDMONTON — The wildfire burning just outside Fort McMurray more than doubled in size Monday evening, and fire crews warned Tuesday’s weather conditions will likely be the greatest challenge yet.
Thick, ominous plumes of smoke filled the sky Monday night. But on Tuesday morning the sky was fairly clear. Officials said that didn’t mean the fire had died down, and explained how an inversion was holding the smoke close to the ground. That was expected to lift in the early afternoon, which is when smoke would begin appearing in the sky again.
“The fire conditions are extreme,” Darby Allen, regional fire chief for the Wood Buffalo municipality, said during an 11 a.m. update Tuesday, talking about how the fire will “wake up.”
…
“The boreal forest is a fire-dependant ecosystem. The spruce trees, pine trees, they like to burn,” Bernie Schmitte, forestry manager in Fort McMurray, explained.
“They have to burn to regenerate themselves, and those species have adapted themselves to fire. Their cones have adapted so they open up after the fire has left, and the trees have adapted in that once they’re old and need to be replaced, they’re available to fire so they burn.”
…
Schmitte said the southwest corner of the fire was most active and saw the most growth Monday. It was burning in a southwest direction, away from Fort McMurray.
Officials said that as long as it remains safe to do so, firefighters would be working with bulldozers through the night to construct a fire break between the tip of the fire and Highway 63.
Read more: http://globalnews.ca/news/2673945/residents-on-alert-as-three-wildfires-burn-near-fort-mcmurray/
Australians like myself also sometimes face serious risk from wildfires, our forests are also “fire-dependent ecosystems”. It is normal to attempt to cut new emergency firebreaks during a severe fire, to try to prevent further spread. But an emergency firebreak is no substitute for properly maintained firebreaks which were created before the wildfire strikes.
Digging a little deeper;
Alberta’s aging forests increase risk of ‘catastrophic fires’: 2012 report
“Wildfire suppression has significantly reduced the area burned in Alberta’s boreal forest. However, due to reduced wildfire activity, forests of Alberta are aging, which ultimately changes ecosystems and is beginning to increase the risk of large and potentially costly catastrophic wildfires.”
To deal with this threat, the committee proposed expanding fire weather advisories to include potential wildfire behaviour, developing quick-response, firefighting specialists, and doing more work on fire prevention through the province’s FireSmart committee.
The goal was to contain all wildfires by 10 a.m. on the day after it had first been assessed, and before the fire had consumed more than four hectares of forest. This standard is met for the vast majority of Alberta wildfires, but it was not met this week in Fort McMurray.
The panel’s report came in response to Alberta’s unprecedented May 2011 fire season, which culminated in the deadly and costly Slave Lake fire that killed one helicopter pilot and took out 510 homes and buildings costing $700 million. The Alberta government’s Sustainable Resource Development department set up a panel to figure out how to deal with this kind of threat.
…
The panel pushed for widespread fire bans, forest area closures, and elevated fines during extreme weather.
They wanted to deal with parts of the forest that presented risk because of their location close to town. “Priority should be given to thinning or conversion of coniferous stands, particularly black spruce, which threaten community developments (as identified through strategic analysis of wildfire threat potential).”
They pushed for more staff, and year-round staff. “Advance start times for resources, including crews, equipment and aircraft contracts, to be fully ready for potential early fire seasons. Ensure staff vacancies are filled as soon as possible. Expand work terms to year round for a portion of firefighting crews to support retention and provide capacity for FireSmart initiatives.”
…
Understaffed, under-resourced forestry workers struggling to contain a growing risk of wildfire, a risk which has been exacerbated by excessive fire suppression causing a buildup of flammables, is a recipe for disaster.
Did Alberta authorities act, and act effectively, on the recommendations of committee? I don’t know the answer to that question. It is possible weather conditions are so severe, even completely reasonable forest safety measures have been overwhelmed by the ferocity of the fire. But if my property and life was directly affected by the current ongoing conflagration, my first question to Alberta authorities would not be “why didn’t you build more wind turbines?”.
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By not willing to sacrifice a few trees around the town for firebreaks, now, millions of trees are being sacrificed! What are authorities thinking allowing towns to be built in the middle of the woods without proactive fire-prevention steps?
The answer to that is… Instead of removing trees along roads and around the City, they were forced to plant more by environmental extremists. A two mile wide fire break woulda been out of the question.
“In Fort McMurray, it seems like history is repeating itself. In 2011, another city in northern Alberta, called Slave Lake, also had a massive fire tear through town, also in May, the dry season. A massive evacuation. Damage totaled $800 million.
So 18 months later, the province produced a report. Their very first recommendation to prevent another fire like that was that municipalities cut down trees near buildings, roads and hospitals.
And the report was ignored, by the PCs, then the NDP. So they’re partly to blame.
But so are environmental extremists.
You see, they think cutting down a single tree is a shameful act.
In Fort McMurray, they didn’t cut down trees next to highways and buildings. Under pressure from eco-extremists, they planted more of them, in the name of “eco-tourism.”
The town also adopted a “green plan,” ensuring “that natural features of development sites (trees, vegetation, wetlands, etc.) are not removed or filled.”
http://www.therebel.media/ezra_levant_may_6
So as you can see, making mile wide fire breaks would be impossible. Well at least until now hopefully.
As to why build a City in such a remote area as some have asked? It’s about a five hour drive from Edmonton. Makes for a very long commute.
On the other hand, there’s 20 trillion dollars worth of oil there!
OK, now the trees are removed by fire from a pretty large spot. Are they satisfied now I wonder.
When applying for a facility in the Fort McMurray region, such as an access road or pipeline corridor, the project proponent comes (came?) under considerable pressure to minimize the total width and to choose a route that missed any large “old growth” trees. The opposite of fire safety. We wound up arguing about individual trees on numerous occasions.
Here is an off-the-wall idea:
Cut down the old-growth trees that fuel these wildfires. Grind up the trees and burn them as fuel in the coal-fired power plants that the NDP wants to scrap. That would cause much less air pollution and asthma problems than the alternative solution – “controlled” forest burns to remove the fuel for wildfires, causing severe air pollution.
Sure this logging and transportation plan would cost a lot more than controlled forest burns, but probably would cost less and provide much more reliable electricity than the intermittent wind power that the NDP wants to hugely expand in southern Alberta (and besides, their wind power plan just will NOT work).
Regards, Allan
Hell, burn trees to make steam for bitumen recovery. Less hauling, more clearing and no gas consumption. Plus the greenies would go nuts!
Rex Murphy on “karma”
http://www.cbc.ca/news/thenational/rex-murphy-fort-mcmurray-wildfire-1.3569425
Thank you clipe – wonderful comments from Rex Murphy.
Thanks Rex .
Well, Notley slashed the forest firefighting budget from $500 million to $86 million, cancelling a water bomber contract. Obviously her predecessor did not do much after the Slave Lake arson and really Canada, obliging Soros’ agenda by sending $600 million to neofascists in eastern Europe, spending hundred of millions in a photo op refugee feel good stuff and failing our own population when it comes to preparedness to natural, always occurring wild forest fires, is simply disgusting.
Notley should resign now, especially after calling the leader of the opposition a “fear monger”, hours before the guy lost his own home.
+ many!
Timing is everything with wildfires. Our part of Washington State was severely torched last summer and weather, not climate, was a factor. We’re a desert, but a somewhat humid desert, and we have a lot of brushland and thin forests that love to burn. A great deal of drama and speculation comes out during a burn, but sometimes something really beautiful happens. Hopefully this John Lindsey photo will link correctly but if not check his facebook page.
http://s184.photobucket.com/user/wyodivot/media/dc10.jpg.html
CNN is now attributing the fire to climate change.
http://www.cnn.com/2016/05/06/opinions/sutter-canada-wildfire-climate/index.html
CNN is another leftist propaganda outfit, pushing a leftist agenda while covering the truth.
Fire at Nordegg, Alberta, May 1919
https://merlemassie.wordpress.com/2015/05/19/the-great-fire-of-1919/
I’ve spent some time on the Bearspaw reserve near Nordegg. This is one of the most beautifully wild and dangerous places on the planet. Any manner of misadvendture involving weather or wildlife or flaura can occur. And does. Love it there.
Sutter is not CNN. Sutter is Sutter. And pretty much a political opportunist ready to tell untruths.
The article was prominently displayed on CNN’s front page, just under the headline story, when it came out. When you click on the link, one of the first things you see is CNN’s banner at the top of the page. Also, it was written by “John D. Sutter, CNN”. There is now an editors note, which I hadn’t noticed before, saying it’s an opinion piece.
Re “CNN is now attributing the fire to climate change.”
So did some panelist on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), or as some call it “Pravda Canada”.
First, the current warm temperatures in Alberta are caused by the recent El Nino and the warm ocean blob off Alaska, not alleged “climate change”.
Next, using the term “climate change” defines the user as an unscientific imbecile.
To be clear, the (failed) hypothesis is “catastrophic humanmade global warming”, wherein alleged humanmade increases in atmospheric CO2 will allegedly cause runaway global warming – so the correct term for this failed hypo is “global warming”.
It is by now clear that the sensitivity of Earth’s climate to increased atmospheric CO2 is very small = 1 degree C or less for a hypothetical doubling of CO2.
There is NO humanmade global warming crisis – it exists only in the minds of scoundrels and imbeciles.
Regards to all, Allan
They never learned their lesson from the slave lake fire almost two years ago now. The old PC government did whatever the treehuggers wanted, and they didn’t fire breaks cut or controlled burns anywhere in the province. The result has been the burning of Slave Lake and now FT Mac. Those are just two towns, there are plenty more just like them waiting to go up in flames.
The investigation of the 2011 Slave Lake fire concluded the cause was arson. So the two choices in the title are not the only choices. If lightning is ruled out, that pretty much just leaves human causes. Accidental or on purpose? The green mob … oops, blob … has been fanning the flames against Fort Mac, metaphorically at least.
The possibility of activist arson is to horrible to imagine and too likely to ignore.
Mike Bromley the Kurd May 6, 2016 at 8:44 pm says;
The possibility of activist arson is to(sic) horrible to imagine and too likely to ignore.
This is best post you’ve made in several months.
Reply
Less than a month ago in this province there was an incidence of (alleged) arson. Copycat?
Former Mayerthorpe mayor defends son accused of arson in CN fire
This is exactly what happened in Canberra in 2003. The Greens and allied weasels prevented any meaningful level of fuel reduction burning from happening. The resulting fire was so hot, burning embers from the fire on the West of the city were raining down and starting fires on the North-East.
Greens want to conserve the woods so that they can be burn. The CO2 emission from uncontrolled fire are apparently better than when the wood replaces some fossil coal as fuel.
“emission are” – wow my grammer
Where id Dr. Patrick Moore when you need him? (For a comment).
Oops – Where is…for an intelligent comment?
Only two words come to mind with any fire disastrous for people — proximity and fuel load. We had one of these in Canberra about 15 years ago. A pine plantation on the other side of the road.
Eric, don’t know if you saw this on our ABC today. Canada has fires effecting a city, yet sea level rise has now swallowed entire islands. Sea (ocean) level rise just went local and is marching Island by Island.
This stuff flows daily from the ABC.
http://ab.co/1Xdiife
I notice they don’t allow comments…
Good move from their perspective, otherwise I’m sure a lot of people would be correcting that disinformation.
Watching the NASA map of how and when those different locations of the Alberta fires occurred, and knowing that a U of A professor says that the fire was likely caused by humans, I’m not so convinced that it was NOT STARTED due to a procedure to get oil out of rock.
Yes, officials say now that the tar sands are not themselves flammable. In other words, the tar is not that flammable. But, oil is very flammable. Just think of all of those oil wells that Saddam Hussein set on fire in Iraq when he was alive!! Also, the chemicals and gases released by “steam-assisted gravity systems” to get oil out of rock, are highly flammable.
I think it might be likely that we will hear later that there was a lot of incompetence in the way that oil was extracted from the ground in the Fort Mac area, putting it’s residents under grave risk and fire danger. Specifically, the cracking of the caprock that “acts as a primary but not always impermeable seal that keeps steamed bitumen from seeping into aquifers, neighbouring industry wellbores and other geological formations, AS WELL AS THE FOREST FLOOR and lakes.”
I grabbed this from the link I’m providing here:
http://thetyee.ca/News/2013/10/07/Next-Oil-Sands-Threat/
“High-pressured blasts of steam can create fractures in the protective cap rock that keeps the bitumen from flowing to the surface or into aquifers. Fluid injection can also reactivate existing faults or fractures and lead to leaks to the surface, other bitumen wells or groundwater.”
It is incorrect to say that bitumen is not highly flammable.
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2015/07/17/3681738/canadian-pipeline-spill-near-tar-sands/
What if the fire was started due to oil pipeline leaks and steam assisted “blow outs?”
Highly improbable speculation by Tina. Basically just wrong.
Athabasca bitumen does not burn easily or even flow at ambient temperatures.
Bitumen has a consistency like road tar – it is thick and black.
To pipeline bitumen, we thin it by diluting it 50:50 with condensate or light oil – and this diluted bitumen (dilbit) will indeed burn – but it is a different product.
So Tina, as a penance for your sins, kindly donate at least $100 to the Red Cross.
https://donate.redcross.ca/ea-action/action?gclid=CNrV7b65xswCFQYIaQodJg8FDw&ea.client.id=1951&ea.campaign.id=50639
Go forth and sin no more,,,
I have used everyday terms for the above post.
For the record, I have two engineering degrees and in a past life participated in several committees for Syncrude Canada Ltd. – then the largest oilsands project on the planet. I chaired the Mining Committee and the Technical Committee, among others, and sat on several more including the Management Committee.
As Manager of Oilsands, I also had one other large mining project (OSLO) and one in-situ project (PCEJ).
The Athabasca oilsands are a natural deposit of bituminous Cretaceous sands that outcrop at Fort McMurray and are bisected by the Athabasca River, and have eroded into the river for millennia.
The surface mining projects are actually cleaning up one of the world’s largest natural oil spills.
Farther from the river, the oilsands are more deeply buried and so in-situ technology (typically SAGD) is used to recover the bitumen.
It is truly regrettable that so many uninformed people choose to slag Athabasca oilsands projects, based on their woeful ignorance about science, technology and economics.
The oilsands have been the primary economic engine of the Alberta and Canadian economies for several decades, and through transfer payments and jobs have financially supported all of Canada.
The total transfer payments from Alberta to the rest of Canada total about 1 million dollars per Alberta family of four (with nominal interest) over the past ~50 years.
All this from a town of less than 100,000 hardworking, decent people – people who are now burned out of their homes due to the incompetence of our governments and their pandering to a gang of phony green fanatics.
Regards to all, Allan
There is no cause for speculation of this kind.
First, understand bitumen production near Fort McMurray has a 50 year history (100 years at a non-commercial scale). Billions of barrels of oil produced.
Second, the Alberta Forest Service assigns a cause to each fire if at all possible.
Therefore, there is no mystery, no maybe. This is an question with a known answer, and the answer is the oil sands producers do not have a history of starting fires.
As for burning bitumen, that is essentially impossible. Some of the oil sands operators upgrade the bitumen on site to something similar to a light sweet crude oil, and ship that light oil – which will burn. If the bitumen would burn, there would be ground fires all over the region from previous forest fires – because the bituminous sands outcrop from every creek valley wall – and there are no such fires.
Hi Bruce.
Excellent comments, thank you.
Call me anytime – Jim C has my number.
Best wishes, Allan
Well I have read most of this post in detail and also gone to a number of the links to see for my self what the real deal is. I find that much of what is being discussed misses the real point and why these things are a problem. As we learned in Victoria in 2009, when you have years of drought followed by adverse weather conditions on a landscape that has been allowed to accumulate combustible debris for decades, a wildfire – is inevitable. To be really scary it has to be fanned by 80 to 120km/hr winds – to create a deadly firestorm. We faced that firestorm and in my town – 207 houses out of 324 were lost – including mine. Many tried to link to Global Warming (not climate change as it hadn’t been invented at that point). It was really the result of the combination of events – drought, heat, fuel, wind, ignition (in our case a broken powerline). The proximity of houses on small blocks made of combustible materials (eg wood) also enhanced the level of destruction by house to house ignition.
The real problem is the expansion of our cities into the surrounding wilderness where the urban fringe is directly affected by such fires. The worst fires in Victoria’s history were in 1851 when a quarter of the state burned and more people died in proportion to the population of Victoria than in 2009! – that was well before someone said it was due to our SUVs and airplanes or the excessive use of fossil fuels.
The reality is that prescribed burns and fire breaks cannot make any impression on firestorms in 100km/hr winds where embers can start spot fires more than 20km beyond the fire front. Various Royal Commissions have tried to find solutions – prescribed burns – allowing the forest to burn naturally – logging to reduce density of forests etc. The reality is that following 2009 we had 2 years of La Nina heavy rains – the forests have regrown – the combustible debris isn’t as dense – but it is there – and we have had more fires.
What is the solution. Don’t build in these areas houses of combustible materials (I bet that most of the houses in Alberta are wood?). Have very strict building codes if you want to live in a forest. A tin roof doesn’t cut it. I have re-built – it is rammed earth – 400mm thick – double glazed windows and fire doors all with outside fire shutters – and a wrap over fire blanket in the roof space that can tolerate direct flame below the steel roof. Then a fire bunker for everyone – so you can survive even if he house catches fire – then come out and put it out. Evacuation takes away that option for people and they can only watch their houses burn.
I feel for the people of Alberta – it is not nice but can be endured and perhaps – if you start again and do it right – the future will be better.
Thank you Melbourne – good comments.
My son did grad school in Oz and I visited him there in 2005.
What a wonderful country you have – my all-time favorite in the six continents where I have done business.
Best, Allan
Thanks Allan
I am a naturalised Ossie – I love it here – and we accept the dangers of living in the forest. The fire history is long and fearsome and has been here long before “climate change”. It just annoys me so much when I see people trying to use the fires for political capital. Changing our emissions will not remove that risk.
I have met many Canadians – in fact have a great friend of mine living close whom I walk my dogs with – and her house survived the 2009 fires. Thems are the breaks!
Stay safe
People in the northeast might be interested in
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Fires_of_1947
The smoke plume from Mt. Desert could be seen just outside Bangor.
They have 16 water bombers on this fire as of this morning.
If they can’t protect the community now with that amount of resources, it will speak to the value of water bombers in the first place.
And 1600 structures burnt is only about 3.0% of the buildings/homes. Most of the community is still there.
Given current conditions, I doubt there is much they can do except try to protect certain areas. It looks like the fire may be doubling in size today.
Never let a good crisis go to waste. Because climate change.
re: “Understaffed, under-resourced forestry workers struggling to contain a growing risk of wildfire,”
Would overstaffed, over-resourced government workers still have struggled to contain a growing risk of a fire-dependant boreal forest ecosystem wildfire?
Trees have evolved to use fire in their reproductive cycle. They’re prone to burn by design. Preventing that is equivalent to GMO forests. It’s just one more thing our geniuses can screw up with government money.
According to Joe Bastardi at Weatherbell Analytics things will remain dry in the region. That is not good at all and this just in:
Alberta battles The Beast, a fire that creates its own weather
http://edmontonjournal.com/news/insight/alberta-battles-the-beast-a-fire-that-creates-its-own-weather-and-causes-green-trees-to-explode
The 2001 wildfire that went through the central Alberta hamlet of Chisholm burned at 233,000 kilowatts per metre, Flannigan says. At the 2011 Slave Lake fire, the heat was 33,000 kilowatts per metre. For context, if a fire is burning at 10,000 kilowatts per metre, it’s generally deemed that aircraft water bombing is less — or no longer — effective.
The Beast is what regional fire chief Darby Allen calls the Fort McMurray fire, and it might well be that the Fort McMurray fire is burning as hot as Chisholm, an issue that Flannigan and his team will soon investigate. The two fires already share one other indicator of unprecedented intensity, with both fires producing pyro cumulonimbus clouds, thunder and lightning storms generated by the fire’s smoke column.
Aerial photographs of the fire near Fort McMurray on May 4, 2016.
Alberta has little history of wildfires which self-manage fuel and, to some extent, create natural firebreaks. The conditions for this explosive wildfire are the result of (1) no previous wildfires in this area and (2) unusual weather conditions which dried out the fuel. Unusual weather patterns could be the related to climate change. As far as “incompetence” – dude you are an ass. Go out there yourself and create a km-wide firebreak.
There is no evidence they are related to “climate change”. You might as well say the unusual weather patterns could be related to space aliens. So you don’t like the word “incompetence”. What then would you call not doing things that you know should be done to stave off a fire like this, which was just waiting for the right weather conditions to come along?
Good comments by Bruce Cobb and false, ignorant comments by Tom Krahl, who said:
“As far as “incompetence” – dude you are an ass. Go out there yourself and create a km-wide firebreak.”
Here is the evidence of government incompetence:
https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2016/05/08/albertas-wildfire/
“And as Bernie Schmitte, forestry manager in Fort McMurray, explained:
“The boreal forest is a fire-dependant ecosystem. The spruce trees, pine trees, they like to burn,”
“They have to burn to regenerate themselves, and those species have adapted themselves to fire. Their cones have adapted so they open up after the fire has left, and the trees have adapted in that once they’re old and need to be replaced, they’re available to fire so they burn.”
There is a much bigger proportion of older trees now because of earlier fire suppression, and it is these that are most combustible.”
___________
In summary:
1. These older trees must be cleared from near towns or firestorms are inevitable. Pandering to green fanatics who oppose the cutting of older trees is the root cause of the Fort McMurray fire and other disasters, like the Slave Lake fire of 2011.
2. And firebreaks DO help – but they have to be in place before the fire, and they have to be very wide to be effective, especially in a firestorm.
At Fort Mac we have huge fleets of the largest heavy equipment on the planet – we can cut wide firebreaks in a few weeks – but incompetent governments pandering to phony green fanatics made this impossible.
Strong El Nino years can significantly impact the climate in Western Canada as we have seen this year and in the past. Early Spring Rainfall is especially impacted. in some areas.
Ft McMurray received very little rain during the last major El Nino 1997/1998 during April and May.
In 1997 it received 1.4 mm and 13.6 mm during April and May . During 1998 it received 21.6 mm and 13.6 mm during April and May .. Typically the April rainfall is low any way ,0.6- 23 mm but May gets to 40-50 mm. Significant rain did not fall until June , 90 mm in 1997 and 43.4mm in 1998. So things were lucky in 1997/1998 but not so in 2016. There may be little relief for the current forest fire situation until June if climate history is any guide..
” ….inferno may keep burning for months without significant rain”
http://www.msn.com/en-ca/money/topstories/albertas-vicious-wildfires-spread-to-suncor-oil-sands-site/ar-BBsL63w?ocid=spartandhp
A similar APRIL and MAY period of lack of rain happened during the 1986/1987 El Nino when 8 mm and 28.7 mm of rain fell during APRIL and MAY in 1986 and 3mm and 25.6 mm in APRIL and MAY IN 1987. The average rainfall during APRIL, MAY and JUNE for FT MCMURRAY is 22mm, 40.7 mm and 63.mm . So it would appear that the years around strong El NINO years may pose a special forest fire hazard due to lack of rain and warm temperatures resulting in very dry forests
a little caturday afternoon music, with SoCal brush fire time lapse…
this was the Station Fire… you could see it from Vista, down in San Diego County.
fhttp://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/fort-mcmurray-wildfire-saturday-1.3571678 for those that still think the oils sands are burning please read this.
I found this scientist’s blog via Climate Etc. He goes after the activists saying it’s climate change and he gives evidence that it’s not.
https://achemistinlangley.wordpress.com/2016/05/04/on-forest-fires-climate-activist-arent-just-insensitive-they-are-also-wrong/
That post brought complaints from the activists, so the next post is also interesting, about activists yelling wolf too often.
https://achemistinlangley.wordpress.com/2016/05/06/on-fighting-climate-change-running-a-marathon-and-climate-activists-crying-wolf/
I’ve never been there, but the whole thing about “this is climate change” is crazy. It’s clearly an area that is very dry in the spring and has huge areas where conditions are just right for a big fire. Sometimes drier that others, but in general conditions are right for fires and there are fires… somewhere. Where the fires are just depends on where the triggers are, whether lightning or human caused. And if the fire starts when there is big wind, there will be a big fire.