Fort McMurray

[starmac]

Some of our neighbors to the north have been having a rough go the last couple of days. As of last night 1600 structures burned already, and the whole town was in danger of going up in flames.
Over 80,000 had to evacuate and had to go the wrong way because the right way was closed, sounds like a real mess. I sure feel for them.

[starmac]

Wow, sounds like it got 10 times worse today, luckily the winds blew it away from town center for the time being.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/...5mW?li=BBnbfcL

[fast ronnie]

Prayer for help.
We had a couple of bad ones here in California last year. Nuff said.

[popper]

Prayers for a quick ending. Looks pretty bad on TV.

[waksupi]

Lots of thick lodge pole pine around there. Kinda like throwing a match on a bucket of gasoline. Unless they get some rain or snow, I don't see them stopping it until it burns to the grass lands.

[Houndog]

Our Canadian neighbors are in my thoughts and prayers.

[enfield]

A friend of mine was supposed to fly to Fort McMurray on Wednesday morning to start a new job, luckily his flight was cancelled before he got out there. He's out of a job, but it's a lot worse for everyone who lives there.

[Isaac]

Is there any help that the States could provide or are they doing it?

We don't get many details here in Maryland, just the headlines.

Prayers for our cousins north of the border.

Isaac

[starmac]

We could try to send some rain or snow, just about the only thing that would really help at this point.

I don't know if any of the US fire fighting crews are up there or not, but it doesn't sound as if the fire will be contained unless they get a break in the weather.

[Idz]

The priorities in firefighting are Personnel, People, Property. First you protect your firefighters, then you protect people in danger if you don't expose your crew to undue risk, finally you protect property. Within Property the priority is critical infrastructure e.g. hospitals, police, fire, utilities, then necessary infrastructure e.g. schools, stores, employers, and last comes personal homes.
In a fire this size the homes get little if any protection. The only real way to save homes in these fires is to have the area saturated with enough people to put out the spot fires caused by the showers of embers. No politician will endorse this because they are afraid of being blamed for casualties. They ignore the increased deaths caused stress and suicide in the aftermath of unprotected neighborhoods being decimated.
If you want your home to survive in a fire like this YOU have to prepare and protect it and expect no help from overwhelmed fire crews. YOU have to study and learn how fires behave, understand fire weather, building materials, suppression techniques, fire gear and when and where to retreat. An interesting statistic is that homeowners staying at their prepared homes have a much lower casualty rate than panicked evacuees trying to flee a rapidly approaching firefront.

good luck

[starmac]

I have read where the winds have been blowing basket ball size flaming embers as much as a mile ahead of this fire, a person staying behind trying to protect his home, may well be commiting suicide.

The way I understand it, there are a lot of communities up there that is not on the road system, you evacuate when the plane leaves or tuff it out, and risk everything.
From what little I have been up in that country, what I have seen is pretty hardy type folks, not the kind to die of stress or commit suicide because of a fire.