Thread title was obviously from this. NSFW Tits and Drugs: Focus: Fire bad. I'm not a sentimental person. My dad's paintings are irreplaceable, that is about it. Long as I leave with my wallet and a pair of pants. How bad would it suck to sit there in your underwear while your life is incinerated and every asshole comes to gawk at you in your manties.
My brother in-law's house burnt down. He was renting and had time to get most of his stuff, and his roommate's stuff, out before it became dangerous. His guns, clothes, tv and video games. He was 20 at the time so didn't own a ton of stuff. When he moved in he asked me if he could use my wood stove that I have sitting in my building. I told him no, not until he had the chimney checked by a pro. Well, he and his roomate welded together their own wood stove. Sure enough, the chimney was cracked at the roof of the old ass farmhouse. He started smelling smoke and eventually saw flames come through the ceiling above the stove. He said he tried to spray it with that little hose next to the faucet at the kitchen sink before he decided all was lost and started throwing stuff out the window. I'd grab my kid and my wife. Most of our sentimental and valuable stuff is up stairs, don't think I'd risk getting trapped up there.
I guy a grew up with lives in Fort McMurray, his house along the entire neighbour hood burnt to the ground. When people were evacuating they had the highway closes for a while because the fire was right there. My wife's family very close friend there house is ok, and Suncor is still making them work. This year we are going to see a good chuck of Canada burn to the ground. The ski hills got some snow this year compaired to last year, but the mountain tops barely got any snow, so there is little water running down and keeping everything wet as the spring starts.
My next door neighbour has family that just showed up from Fort Mac last night. Their house has also burned to the ground, and they described the "50 cars at a time" convoy out with the military. They had to re-fuel their truck with tankers before leaving because there was no source of gas anywhere... roads along the route were blocked off... it was very much like running a gauntlet to get out. Meanwhile here in BC we've already fought 232 fires this year. It's going to get really, really ugly this year.
And your asshat in charge seems to think international help would be unnecessary. http://www.nationalpost.com/m/wp/bl...exican-offers-to-help-fight-fort-mac-wildfire
I have no love for Justin Trudeau, but let's get real. The notion of giving Russia permission to access our airspace and temporary visas for them to deploy military en masses to a certain area? No way. There is a long history of contested land, access to northern natural resources and one-upmanship between our countries. I have no doubt that the people of Russia might have sympathy for the people of Ft Mac. I am highly suspicious that when their politicians get involved their intentions are pure, though. A more extreme example would be if ISIS offered to send manpower. Hopefully Trudeau would turn that offer down, too.
Yea, but he also turned down help from many others. Not just Russia. He could say no to Russia and yes to more friendly places, no?
The smoke is showing up down here in the clouds every couple of days. Also, it has been raining here like crazy. Hope some of those anvil clouds go up there and help douse the fires. Also, apparently some people are being allowed back into their homes the last I heard from my Canadian friends and the news. Alternate Focus: In Bayview, ID last year basically a good portion of the area torched up, to the point that it was all over national news. As Idaho, much like Montana and British Columbia, is filled with trees, forest fires are common. The severity varies from year to year, but the sad fact is many of these blazes are being caused by dipshits not managing campfires correctly. I must say, driving around when the smoke in the atmosphere is turning the very air pungent with wood-smoke-scent and that it always looks like the Apocalypse is happening or a hellish dimension is collapsing into our own is fucking nuts. Alternate-Alternate Focus: If I was evacuated quickly, the animals and my bug-out bag. Probably the animal's food and a bit of my own. If I had time, I'd try to get more stuff out of it, but if speed was necessary then I'm not going to waste calories worrying about getting the computers and game systems and televisions and books all loaded, they can burn.
From what I understand, the Canadian mobilization and donations were so vast that they've actually overwhelmed the demand. Some news reports have noted that the logistics of so many people trying to help are working against the effort. Now, that being said, I'm unsure why he would turn down US military water bombers and specialized crews. There are only two reasons I can think of: one, the Canadian crews are proficient enough and the fire so vast that no more manpower would help. Two, the prime minister really is that dumb.
Really, you never try to put out a forest fire, you only try to contain it and protect homes and other property until such time as it burns itself out. My understanding is that the fire happened to start near/in/around Fort Mac, so all the real property damage is done... there's nothing else to protect, so they're just letting it burn. (Other than a few things here and there, which the available resources can handle). This isn't like the fires of Kuwait that took an international effort 2 years to extinguish, and it's not lined up to take out 500k homes or anything... this has a finite amount of resources it'll consume and then it's done. I think the offers were quite nice but the realities of the logistics and time lines would have born out limited benefits.
In other news, BC is already well ahead of our normal pace for forest fires... http://www.castanet.net/news/BC/165341/Wildfire-cost-nears-2B
Do we know what started the fire? Those firefighters who go in there with axes and crap and try to create burn lines and contain it, the smokejumpers and hotshots, those guys are insane. They hike in for a week, do backbreaking labor for a few days, only to have the wind change directions and completely fuck up all the hard work they gave their blood sweat and tears for. It has to be maddening. And the badass part is, there's people who LOVE it.
I have to think it's got to be a logistics thing. There's already so many air tankers, and bombers in the area that adding more would only start to hamper the operation. I don't think people understand how isolated Fort McMurray really is unless they've been up there. It's a city mainly serviced by a single four lane highway 4 hours away from the next largest centre. The last 3 hours of that drive up highway 63 is just boreal forest on either side of the highway until you reach the city with nothing for miles in either direction. My heart breaks for these people. Good news is that early reports coming from the first responders is that a large portion of the town survived the fire, and all the large infrastructure made it (water treatment plant, industrial area, rec centres, etc.). About 15-20% burned down. Last I heard they think the fire was man made. Still haven't determined the actual cause beyond that.
That road has been a bone of contention for years. Like I've mentioned, no one who works in Ft. Mac actually lives there, so despite the high salaries the tax base is quite small. They've been clamoring for a more substantial road up there since as far back as I can remember, which was when I was 12 and my dad was stationed there for the first time (in my lifetime). Traffic is always bad and when you have so many thousands of guys who want to head out on the weekend (or whatever their shifts allow), it's a logistical nightmare getting in and out. That policy of, "the road is good enough" has definitively bit them in the ass, I think. If they had a proper highway then the evacuation and emergency service management would have been much easier on everyone.
If the fire started near the highway and ran north to the city would the people be trapped? Is there anything north or east-west of there? Sad to hear the problems they're having. I imagine this will force the politicians to construct a new road or improve that highway and make it wider, make it an evacuation route that'll hopefully have more resources along it.
After the last fire in the late 90's that cut off highway 63 south of Fort McMurray they did finish another highway. Highway 881 down to Lac la Biche. It's a nightmare because of it's location. Building roads on permafrost and muskeg is challenging. When my dad lived there I remember talking to people about the roads, and they would say entire sections of the road would just disappear come spring time. I'm not saying they shouldn't upgrade the road or build another one, I just can't think of how that would be accomplished or where it would go. Pretty much. The highway goes north through town up to the oil sands facilities. But other than that there's nothing but forest and lakes. The camps at the facilities are pretty large and can house a large number of people. About 25000 people did evacuate north to these. Most of the larger facilities have airfields, so they were able to start flying people out. I know a local carrier Westjet and the oil companies jets did a bunch of runs back and forth getting people and pets out. This is the kind of stuff the fire depts had to deal with. A guy in Fort Mac had a door chime camera and it captured a bunch of fire fighters trying to stop his house from burning down. http://www.calgaryherald.com/news/l...ort+mcmurray+firefighters/11907882/story.html Crazy to think that one little ember got under the front deck, worked it's way up the column and into the attic space. I'm sure this was happening all over town.