Alberta, Canada

[Jeffrey]

http://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/alberta-vo ... -1.2882656

[bmxninja357]

Different area but strange story.

Ninj

[Jeffrey]

Damn it, how large is Alberta.

[bmxninja357]

Bigger than frig yo!

I think it fits like 29 belgiums

Ninj

[eric]

Damn it, how large is Alberta.

Uhhh... bigger than a breadbox? More serious note, Mayerthorpe is about 4 or 5 hours south and west of fort Mac, probably much shorter as the crow flies. Alberta suffers from the disadvantage that all major transportation routes follow the compass ordinals. If you want to go on the diagonal you're hooped.

With respect to a junior firefighter being an arsonist, that's old news. Certain people who enjoy fires are naturally attracted to a job that allows them to play with them legally, just a fact of life. Old joke, if you want to start a fire, ask a firefighter.

[bmxninja357]

Alberta is 661,848 km²

So bigger than California but smaller than Texas.

Had to clarify.
Ninj

[notorial dissent]

I'd prefer it to their beer.

I can't disagree with the sentiment, but on the whole I'd just rather get my water from the tap, I at least know where it's been and where it was from, as in I really do, and we have VERY good water most of the time except when they switch supplies or decide they have to clean a pipe and then it gets right chloriny for a few days. I also get water from a local spring company that has been in business for well over 100 years and I know the quality of their water as well. Around here they inspect and quality control with a vengeance. So either is good and safe and highly palatable. I also like the spring water for brewing, no nasty minerals.

[bmxninja357]

I wanna hear BMX's theories.

Well I still don't have a keyboard but I shall chicken pick it out on my phone.

I think they let it burn. And I'm not alone. There's quite a few that think that. Even a council member. A few firefighters and several farmers I talk to. Not to mention my peers and a family member. None of which are conspiracy types at all. In fact one is a founding member of a edmonton skeptical society.

Generally speaking ft mac is a well to do city. All bought with credit and backed by oil jobs. Very few of the folks in ft mac were there 20 years ago. Very few. And most have a place there because it's a status symbol. They aren't invested like someone with generations in a town. Like say slave lake.

[Burnaby49]

I wanna hear BMX's theories.

Well I still don't have a keyboard but I shall chicken pick it out on my phone.

I think they let it burn. And I'm not alone. There's quite a few that think that. Even a council member. A few firefighters and several farmers I talk to. Not to mention my peers and a family member. None of which are conspiracy types at all. In fact one is a founding member of a edmonton skeptical society.

Generally speaking ft mac is a well to do city. All bought with credit and backed by oil jobs. Very few of the folks in ft mac were there 20 years ago. Very few. And most have a place there because it's a status symbol. They aren't invested like someone with generations in a town. Like say slave lake.

If I understand ninja correctly he's saying let it burn out. I agree and nothing conspiracy about it, just forest mangement. In the past fires burnt without a lot of human intervention to fight them. We'd do what we could and they'd eventually burn out with some help from fire fighting. Now the policy is to stop all fires fast with massive resources. But its been too successful and we're just acquiring future problems by letting forests grow too dense and with too much underbrush, essentially turning them into potential disasters. Just too much fuel packed into too small an area. So fires are getting more massive than in the past because they have so much more combustable mateial to work with.

[notorial dissent]

The problem, as they discovered to their horror in Yellowstone, is that that if you put the fires out you don't remove the cause, dead trees and underbrush, and you eventually reach a threshold where it isn't just a problem, but a catastrophe waiting ot happen, again see Yellowstone. Fire is a natural part of the forest life cycle, and when you continually interrupt it it begins to really add up to where what should/would have been a minor fire turns in to an area wide conflagration. Instead of having a small area to burn, there is then an immense area of fuel and burnable material and you get Yellowstone. The dead trees and underbrush need to be periodically removed to promote growth of new trees and plants and to continue the forest, and as long as you have standing dead timber it still blots out the sun and prevents new growth, so otherwise you have a forest of similar aged trees that are all going to start dying at the same time and you have an even bigger problem. I know of several forests that due to lack of modern fire and massive beetle and weather kill now have huge areas of dead timber that is eventually going to burn and take out the surviving forest, and probably a number of towns as well, when it ultimately goes up. They are trying to clear the areas with lumbering to get the areas cleaned up and reforested, but likely too little too late. There was a lot of screaming and wailing in anguish when Yellowstone burned, and I don't argue that it was a truly sad sight afterwards, but in spite of our, relatively brief in forest terms, unhappy period, things have now come back and the forest and wildlife have been revitalized from what i have read and seen. As a result of Yellowstone the Forest Service changed its policy on burn, and is now allowing controlled burns to maintain the health and vitality of the forests, as nature requires. Specifically some of those trees ONLY spread seed after there has been a fire and some of them haven't in living memory.

[Arthur Rubin]

Perhaps, also, the fire is "too big to fail" be put out by normal firefighting techniques. I mean, there's no shortage of water in Canada (or even Alberta), but there is a shortage of water-drop planes.

This is just speculation, but there are pictures of the fire from space....

[bmxninja357]

I'm talking the city not just the bush. This is the fire that saved alberta economy. Not to mention the massive amounts of bancrupcys that were about to happen. Particularly in fort mac. The insurance companies take the hit. Everyone is out of debt. All those skidoos boats trailers dirt bikes grossly overpriced houses and a city with a piss poor infastructure are done.

Now it can all be rebuilt properly. Not rushed poorly built garbage.

Financially speaking it's the best thing that could of happend to alberta aside from oil hitting 150 a barrel.

Anyone who thinks they couldn't have stopped it by comandeering the largest earth moving equipment on earth is bonkers. They didn't want it stopped.

Before it hit town they had a whopping 30 firefighters. The skaro fire out in nowhereland had 300. 2 hours away.

Need a smoke? Watch Rome burn?

Think to rich to fail. That's fort mac.

Ninj

[notorial dissent]

Fires like the Alberta fire, really big fires are incredibly destructive and expensive on many fronts, and incredibly disruptive of human life and endeavor. I still remember the Summer not so very long ago when it seemed like much of the west was on fire, not a pretty or pleasant memory.

[The Observer]

I think it is more likely the result of government failing to realize that a fire like this could quickly get out of hand before they could react properly. Like a perfect storm, this is a perfect fire - with all the right components present to make it the mother of all fires.

As an example, the brush fires in Laguna Hills in southern California (over 20 years ago) caught the local fire enforcement off guard and they ended up watching a number of nice and expensive homes going up in flames before they could get it under control. There was certainly no need and no desire for multi-million dollar homes to go up in flames in an area where there was strict zoning and planning. But a severe drought, hot and dry weather, lack of brush clearance, lack of previous fires in the area, and budget cutbacks in local and state government all added up to a disaster in the making.

Sometimes, bad things just happen.

[eric]

Sometimes, bad things just happen.

You got it. Every year in Canada there are fires, every year communities are evacuated, but usually they are smaller ones on the order of a few hundred people.

There are a couple of things unusual about the the Fort Mac fire:
1. It was bigger, hotter, and faster moving than most for a number of reasons - we're talking a fire that was running fast enough and hot enough to jump barriers that would stop most, such as 150 foot wide rivers;
2. Through sheer bad luck it had to happen near a major community which has grown fast enough that it doesn't have the typical wildland/urban interface - except for along the highway and north of town the bush runs right up to town - there aren't the usual odd little communities and houses around Fort Mac with cleared areas to slow the fire's progress. Yes, those isolated houses and farms are a write-off in the case of a major fire, but they will slow down the progress of the fire or divert it into multiple smaller fire fronts.

[Arthur Rubin]

As an example, the brush fires in Laguna Hills in southern California (over 20 years ago) caught the local fire enforcement off guard and they ended up watching a number of nice and expensive homes going up in flames before they could get it under control. There was certainly no need and no desire for multi-million dollar homes to go up in flames in an area where there was strict zoning and planning. But a severe drought, hot and dry weather, lack of brush clearance, lack of previous fires in the area, and budget cutbacks in local and state government all added up to a disaster in the making.

Don't forget the planning commission's refusal to authorize a temporary water storage area....

[bmxninja357]

so a few nights ago a couple fellas go into the old bar i used to work in. They give the waitress their sob story. They just came from ft mac. They dont have thier wallets and the ride they caught dropped them off there to wait for thier friend with whom they are staying. Everyone feels bad for them. They tell her their friend has money for them when he gets there. So she breaks the rules due to feeling bad for them and lets them Run a tab until there buddy gets there.

Friend finally gets there. They go outside for a smoke. They never return. Stiffed the waitress, a single mom with two kids for about 200 bucks.

This will be common as most folks from ft mac make a minimum 100k a year. So they have a real sense of the world owes them a living.

I only feel bad for folks who lived there before about 1985. Those are the real residents. I have little care for the jacked up truck trophy wife crowd. The longer they get to live like refugees the better. Maybe they will learn some manners and a new skill like saving for when things go wrong.

And did canada forget all the other people who need help all across the nation? Im a little disheartned that everyones heart is bleeding purple piss for a bunch of well to do jerks who cant stick there hands out far enough for free ride.

Ninj

[webhick]

This will be common as most folks from ft mac make a minimum 100k a year. So they have a real sense of the world owes them a living.

Or it was just a couple of jerks pretending to be disaster victims so they could get some free booze/food.

[bmxninja357]

I'm guessing your not from alberta and have not been dealing with these folks for years.

Ninj

[Burnaby49]

I'm guessing your not from alberta and have not been dealing with these folks for years.

Ninj

We all have our grudges and you've had your say about Fort McMurray and its inhabitants. Time to move on.