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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They have too much old trees in Alberta. To prevent further spread of wildfire, invite logging companies to cut all trees surrounding the 26 sq. km. wildfire. Let them use the trees for lumber. With profit incentive, they will quickly denude the forest faster than the wildfire.
Alberta and British Columbia to the west are both about 1M km2 in area. A good portion of BC is forest on crown land. The logging rate is less than 1% of forest per year, while the time to mature is 60 years or so. That, plus fire suppression, eventually leads to over-mature forest. Also, Greenies have put over 15% of land into parks to preserve nature, but some fire burn to bare soil because of “let them burn naturally” policy.
There is too much forest in the world for humans needs, now that don’t use wood for heat/cooking. Forests are not carbon sinks, they are reservoirs with a maximum mass.
A vigorous logging industry will prevent uncontrolled forest fires. Cut old trees and replant new ones. Wildfires rarely occur in commercial forests.
Here are two links which contain some amazing maps of fire danger conditions and active fires and lots of other info, for those who like to explore.
http://wildfire.alberta.ca/
http://bcwildfire.ca/
Dragon Den / Shark Tank investor, Kevin O’Leary, has advice for Alberta premier.
An Open Letter from Kevin O’Leary to Premier Rachel Notley
http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/kevin-oleary/an-open-letter-from-kevin_b_9385016.html
Wow, he sure doesn’t pull any punches.
The greatest danger to any forest anywhere are Greenies. Know for a fact they where the first ones to run away from Ft,Mac, Politicians and greenies……immense menace to mankind and nature.
“why didn’t you build more wind turbines?”. HA!
Further, why didn’t they chop down more trees to make room for wind turbines? 😉
It’s good for that type of forest to experience these burns. Maybe a preventative firewall would have worked, but I’m more concerned with how the fire started. There have been attacks on oil trains resulting in derailments, before. This might be another attack on the Oil Sands, IMO., I would investigate for possible arson.
“Pat Paulsen May 8, 2016 at 4:50 am
…I’m more concerned with how the fire started.”
My thoughts too as is reported, ignition source is still unknown. Deliberate? We here in New South Wales in Australia the “authorities” are back burning. So the whole region is shrouded in a smoky cloud…and rightly so.
A scientifically designed fire break around Fort McMurray is the the main cause of this disaster. A ‘controlled fire ring’ and a no vegetation zone must now be created.
One wonders how AGW was responsible. We are alleged to have added what? .4c to the alleged 1.2c for the last 150 years?
So that .4c is a global average, so we divide it between the individual sites used to capture data present in the record.
So what is .4 divided by every location used to capture data in the record that shows a warming anomaly?
and that tiny fraction of an average over Alberta has apparently set trees on fire, .00000000000000something degrees of “ALLEGED” warming at that.
BAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
it’s a wonder my sauna doesn’t go up in flames, being made of dry wood and the air 110c degrees.
These people are mentally ill.
I was at a presentation on District Energy last week and one opportunistic speaker could not resist pontificating on the hot topic of the Fort McMurray fire, saying maybe now people will believe in climate change. There was not even a nod to the human tragedy underway. Aside from raising my blood pressure, it led me to ask: Fort McMurray 2016 Fire — Man-made Climate Change or Natural Variability? I remembered a bit of Alberta history and found this article.
——————————————————–
The beginning of what some people thought was the end of the world started with a small wildfire in the northeast corner of British Columbia.
It had been an exceptionally hot spring and forest fire managers were too busy with other fires in B.C., Alberta and the southern Yukon to do anything about a blaze that was remote and so far away from human settlement. The policy was to ignore fires that were 15 kilometres away from roads or human settlements.
Within a few days, though, the fire crossed into Alberta’s Chinchaga wild lands. Fuelled by a tinder dry forest that seemingly went on forever, the relatively small blaze developed into a wildfire of such monstrous proportions that the thickness of the smoke led some people in Ontario to believe that an atomic bomb had exploded and that the western world was at war with Russia.
Aircraft were grounded. Farmers milked their cows earlier, chickens went to roost and the U.S. air force postponed a search for a missing plane.
The blaze burned for 222 days and torched a stretch of forest that was 245 kilometres long. It was and still is the biggest forest fire to hit Canada in modern times.
More than 14,000 square kilometres of forest went up in flames. Smoke from the fire could be detected as far away as Great Britain and Holland. The heat was so intense in spots that it changed the chemistry of the soil to the point where trees could not regenerate.
“Anyone who witnessed it, as I did, the great smoke pall can never forget the eeriness of the occurrence and the extraordinary gloom,” Canadian astronomer Helen Swayer Hogg wrote in The Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada 15 years later.
“The sun was turned to various shades of blue or violet over much of the eastern part of the continent.”The Globe and Mail and Toronto Star newspapers wrote articles and published illustrations explaining why the city of Toronto had to turn on the street lights at midday.
It was not an alien invasion as some people feared. Nor was it an eclipse of the sun, as others believed. But in places such as Buffalo, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Fort Erie and New York, it was so dark that the lights at baseball stadiums had to be turned on to illuminate mid-afternoon ball games.
An article in the New York Times quoted one woman who told how her rooster was so confused it crowed at 4 p.m., thinking it was dawn.
Another article in a Jamestown, N.Y., paper described how chickens that had spread out for their midday foraging “suddenly realized they were being caught by darkness, so they scurried back across the cow yard in more than usual earnest, their heads moving in delayed jerks.”
One elderly man in the town of Busti in New York State was so frazzled when a relative went in to check on him, he was shaking like a leaf. “Do you think this is the end of the world?” he asked.
“Everyone remembers what he was doing when he heard that President Kennedy had been shot, that Pearl Harbor was bombed or that either world war had ended,” local historian Norman Carlson wrote in the Jamestown Post Journal.
“So too everyone my age and older remembers another event: a Sunday afternoon when the sun ceased to give her light and our primitive fears of –darkness, mortality and powerlessness rose at least near enough to the surface to etch a lasting trace that belied our outward calm.”
————————————————————————————–
The year was 1950. Before the modern era of climate change. According to Wikipedia the Chinchaga or Wisp fire is the single largest recorded fire in North American history. Article source: Edmonton Journal, shortly after the Slave Lake fire in 2011.
One event does not make for a climate model verification. Neither do two episodic events far apart in time demonstrate a trend or that it is natural variability. But at least we should ask whether our forecasts of the future, especially where they are inflection points to ‘catastrophe’ demanding radical government interventions (the speaker today wanted carbon prices in BC to go from $30 to $100 in the short term and to $700 by 2050), are consistent with the record of the past. Perhaps the models are not yet as foolproof as nature is resilient.
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Our regards to all of our friends in Alberta, and especially to those facing the devastating loss of their homes and businesses in Fort McMurray. These are neighbourhoods I walked about 40 years ago, early in my career. It is painful to watch the flames, but reassuring to see the amount of help neighbours are giving to each other. I only hope, in the aftermath, they do not have to endure too much proselytizing and pseudo-science from your BC neighbours.
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.
Elizabeth May of the Green Party, and GW doom and gloom. 9 minute discussion of May’s comments.
Blame for Fort McMurray fire
Political panel discusses whether it’s a bad time to link climate change and the Alberta wildfires
http://www.cbc.ca/player/play/681608259907
In the links I gave above there are stats for BC wildfires by year — it’s about 50-50, lightning caused versus human caused.
For the recent fires in northern BC, they are blaming arson.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/british-columbia/investigators-believe-wildfires-in-bcs-peace-region-deliberately-set/article29945796/
Oh, the CO2.
UPDATE ON THE FORT MAC FIRE
This article from Fort McMurray Today, the local newspaper, has a good summary and photos. About 2400 structures, just over 10% of the town were lost, but about 90% including all the major structures like the hospital, muni buildings and all schools were saved.
Given the reality of this very hot firestorm, this sounds (on balance) like a win to me – a big win for the fire crews, and a lesser win for the good people of Fort Mac. It could have been much worse, like the Slave Lake fire in 2011 where 1/3 of the town was destroyed.
Still it was a big loss for the government authorities, who reportedly under-reacted to the initial blaze, letting it get out of control, and failed to apply the simple lessons learned from the 2011 Slave Lake fire to Alberta municipalities.
In summary, this is what should have been done, according to the experts:
1. Older trees must be cleared from near towns or firestorms are inevitable. Government pandering to phony green fanatics who oppose the cutting of older trees was the root cause of the Fort McMurray fire and other disasters, like the Slave Lake fire of 2011.
2. 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.
Regards, Allan
____________________
FORT MCMURRAY FIRE: PREMIER RACHEL NOTLEY SAYS 2,400 STRUCTURES DESTROYED IN FORT MCMURRAY
Monday, May 9, 2016 5:22:59 MDT PM
http://www.fortmcmurraytoday.com/2016/05/09/premier-rachel-notley-to-tour-fort-mcmurray-wildfire-damage-today
“She said a total of 2,400 structures have burned – just more than 10 per cent of the city – but major infrastructure like the hospital, municipal buildings and all the schools have been saved.
Another 12 structures were destroyed in Anzac.
Of the 88,000 people evacuated, more than 40,000 are in Edmonton, 5,000 in Calgary and another 2,000 in Lac La Biche with 25,000 who have registered but haven’t said where they are staying.
The fire now covers 204,000 hectares and continues to be fought. It spread further east Sunday but with cooler weather Monday, firefighters have been able to move closer to it.
More cool weather is expected and fire crews have been able to use heavy equipment to keep it from spreading faster.”
According to the grapevine, a fleet of local helicopters were geared up by their owner to fight the fledgling Fort Mac fire, but he was told they were not needed…
Also, the Alberta forest-fire-fighting budget had been slashed by the NDP and some or all such contracts were not even in place.
– See the exchange with Premier Rachel below from the Alberta Legislature on May 3, when the fire was already burning dangerously close to Fort Mac.
But don’t worry, all is well – the NDP has doubled the Carbon Tax, and has a plan to replace our cheap, reliable coal plants with expensive, intermittent wind power…
****************
NOTLEY ACCUSED OPPOSITION OF “FEARMONGERING” OVER FIRE RISK
Peter Muggeridge | May 6th, 2016
http://www.everythingzoomer.com/notley-accused-opposition-fear-mongering-fire-risk/
In the days of before the Northern Alberta fires began burning uncontrollably – causing the evacuation of the entire town Fort McMurray – Premier Rachel Notley accused opposition leader Brian Jean of “fearmongering” and “grandstanding” when he voiced concerns over the province’s wildfire preparedness.
The exchange took place on May 3 in the Alberta legislature. Premier Notley took issue with Wildrose Party leader Jean when he asked her if NDP budget cuts had left communities like Fort McMurray dangerously exposed to wildfire, especially during this abnormally hot and dry spring.
Here’s a shortened version of their exchange:
Mr. Jean: In Fort McMurray neighbours, friends, and oil sands workers have either had to leave their homes or watch as fires burn very closely to them on the border of our city. Albertans are worried that the NDP doesn’t know what a serious threat these wildfires are … How can the Premier possibly defend these types of decisions, putting our communities in Alberta at risk?
Ms Notley: Well, Mr. Speaker, I don’t have to defend those types of decisions because we didn’t make those types of decisions. The member opposite once again has his facts wrong. We have the resources that we need. They are in place in Fort McMurray.
Mr. Jean: In February a tender was issued for a water-skimming air tanker group. On April 29 this government cancelled the tender. All water-skimming aircraft currently contracted are from Abbotsford, B.C., based Conair. Can the Premier please explain right now to Albertans why this contract was scrapped and why we are settling for slower, short-range, smaller, and less capacity water tanker aircraft?
Ms Notley: [W]e’ve made it very clear and all the contractors know full well that when we need them, they need to be there. They are there. They are being hired. Every resource that is required is being dedicated to this fire, and the members opposite should stop the fearmongering.
Mr. Jean: This is not fearmongering, Mr. Speaker. You can’t cut $400 million from wildfire management and say that you’re serious about fighting these fires … Will the Premier today reverse these terrible decisions so we can make sure that our communities and Albertans are safe?
Ms Notley: [W]e have access to the same number of tankers and all the same amount of equipment that we had before, and we will use that and more, if necessary, because we are concerned about getting the job done in Fort McMurray. We are not interested in engaging in political grandstanding and fearmongering.
*************
Epilogue:
Wild Rose Party leader Brian Jean’s house was among the 2400 structures in Fort Mac that were destroyed by this wildfire.
Brian Jean lost his 24-year-old son one year ago in March 2015 to misdiagnosed lymphoma. He carries on…
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/alberta/alberta-wildrose-leader-brian-jean-enters-critical-stretch-of-campaign/article24070378/
Here is video evidence:
Context?
Both Mars fought fires near Fort McMurray in 2011, operating from Gregoire Lake which was too close the fires this year.
(The Mars is only a seaplane, so for efficient use requires a sizeable body of water relatively close to the fire. Perhaps for inefficient use Lake Athabaska could be used, the Mars fought fires well into Mexico from a reservoir in Texas, but that’s unusual. (40 minutes flying, IIRC round trip. The Mars is limited to gelled water, foamed water, and water whereas landplanes can deliver a retardant-water mix that persists for much longer so is good for creating fire breaks in some vegetation configurations – such as in the sagebrush north of Kamploops.)
And this year the one Mars still usable for fire fighting was undergoing annual maintenance when Fort McMurray had the need. (Those fires were relatively early, though I’m advised that’s not unusual in NE BC/northern AB.)
(Without government interest Coulson probably did not rush to spend on the maintenance, perhaps he started when a plan to demonstrate it at the renowned Oskosh WI show was being developed. There’s an opportunity for many readers to see it in action.)
Certainly are tough questions to ask of the BC government about the Mars, including why they now tout a landplane when last year they were touting small amphibians (and making false claims about their speed), in both cases as reasons to not put the Mars on contract.
Firefighting is politics.
Pretty valid news piece, until that guy pop’d up at the end about subscribing and being a member and such. however, thanks for sharing this.
Thank you, Alan.
r.euronews.com/2016/05/10/exclusif-des-dechets-nucleaires-et-toxiques-etaient-stockes-a-fort-mcmurray/
is it true ?
Above ink should be fr.
Low-Level Radioactive Waste Management Office
http://www.cnl.ca/en/home/environmental-stewardship/llrwmo.aspx
The Low-Level Radioactive Waste Management Office (LLRWMO) was established in 1982 to carry out the responsibilities of the federal government for the management of historic low-level radioactive waste (LLRW) in Canada. The Office is operated by CNL through a cost-recovery agreement with Atomic Energy of Canada Limited, the federal Crown corporation that provides funding, direction and priorities for the LLRWMO.
The LLRWMO manages historic LLRW at numerous waste sites located throughout Canada and has successfully completed projects in Ontario, British Columbia, Alberta and the Northwest Territories. The Office responds to questions from the public, conducts consultation and stakeholder engagement activities and establishes partnerships to resolve LLRW issues within local communities.
The LLRWMO is committed to protecting public health and the environment, while performing its duties in a timely and cost effective manner. The LLRWMO has completed many successful remediation projects in its more than 30-year history.
I did not see Fort McMurray on this list – but this is not conclusive.
http://www.cnl.ca/en/home/environmental-stewardship/decommissioning/default.aspx
CNL manages all of Canada’s nuclear legacy liabilities at CNL sites.
CNL is responsible for implementing the program by carrying out decommissioning and site remediation work and managing the legacy waste. This work involves:
•Ensuring regulatory compliance, safety and effectiveness;
•Identifying priorities and developing annual plans;
•Reporting on approved activities; and
•Holding and administering licences, facilities, lands, materials and other asset responsibilities related to the nuclear legacy liabilities.
CNL manages legacy liabilities at the following sites in Canada:
•Chalk River Laboratories in Ontario, with about 70 per cent of the liabilities;
•Whiteshell Laboratories and the nearby Underground Research Laboratory in Manitoba, with about 20 per cent of the liabilities;
•Three shutdown prototype reactors, with about 10 per cent of the liabilities:
•Nuclear Power Demonstration (NPD) reactor in Rolphton, Ontario;
•Douglas Point reactor in Kincardine, Ontario;
•Gentilly-1 reactor in Bécancour, Quebec.
Wow! Just … wow!
More enviro vitriol from The Guardian.
The arsonists of Fort McMurray have a name
Fossil fuel corporations are causing the climate change fuelling mega-fires – and they should be footing the bill for the devastation
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/true-north/2016/may/12/the-arsonists-of-fort-mcmurray-have-a-name
Residents of Fort Mcmurray there are no such arsonists. Go for a wide fire break of scientific width or else have all future constructions of brick-mortar.
Clarifying my reference to oil ands lighter than northern AB:
– those east of Edmonton on the AB-SK border have oil less heavy than those in northeast AB.
– Venezuela’s oil sands also have oil less heavy than those in northeast AB. But voters there ruined the industry by electing a Marxist tyrant.
It’s relative, none are light oil.
(Another refining factor is contaminants. I recall that the oil found in the western High Arctic was good quality. Some was tested in the Montreal QC area, but there wasn’t enough found to justify a pipeline south.
Much natural gas was found but there was already plenty of that in NE BC, piped to the west coast of Canada and US.
I worked in the NG fields of NE BC in 1965, testing wells. Some of them were several decades old then, others much newer, and more has been found since both further north (Fort Nelson) and in the Peace River Block around Dawson Creek.
A side note of interest is that the Montney basin in that area has “condensate” liquid and perhaps some oil, as well as NG. Companies were gearing up to develop those, one worker camp was to have 2500 residents, but I presume all is nought with low energy prices now – unless Cheerleader Clark pulls an export rabbit out of her hat (BC Premier Christy Clark still hopes much NG can be sported as liquid, to east Asia.)
This event could have been a lot worse, the article needs better refinement to reflect its headline though.
Thankfully people made it out, to see that was just terrible. It’s changed my views about that place of work and such, for the better that is, nobody should have to endure something as terrible as that.