It’s been another dry week for central and northern parts of Alberta. No appreciable precipitation has fallen near Edmonton or Fort McMurray – and surrounding areas continue to see extreme fire danger conditions.
As of Thursday afternoon, nine days after the mandatory evacuation of Fort McMurray, the blaze in that area has burned 241,000 hectares of land.
That’s roughly 3.5 times the geographic size of the City of Edmonton – where thousands of Albertans who fled the area are calling their temporary home.
“The Fort McMurray fire grew very rapidly in the first week,” wildfire information officer Travis Fairweather said. “It was detected on Sunday, May 1 in the late afternoon, and within a week it had grown to over 204,000 hectares.”
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Since Sunday, it’s grown another 40,000 hectares – slow in comparison.
“A good portion of this additional growth was from when the fire caught up to another smaller fire on May 8, at which point the 20,000 hectares of that fire was added to the total size of the Fort McMurray fire.”
“Which means the fire really only grew about 20,000 hectares itself, and for a fire of this size, that really isn’t much. So it’s safe to say that it’s grown significantly less this week than it did last week.”
The fire growth slowed thanks to cooler temperatures, calmer winds and slightly increased humidity levels – but Alberta Wildfire officials know that could change quickly.
“While we are happy to see such little growth over the past week, we are still very aware that should the weather turn hot and windy again, the fire could very easily pick back up, and we could start to see larger growth once more,” Fairweather said.
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Dense boreal forest covers all of northern and most of western Alberta. Coniferous trees stand several meters high, thick moss covers the forest floor, shrubs haven’t fully budded leaves – and it’s all extremely dry.
It’s no wonder the blaze was so explosive.
“It’s not only the fine fuel – those needles and branches that are already quite dry,” Bruce Macnab, head of the Wildland Fire Information System, explained. “But because of relatively low rain fall, some of the larger dead wood for example is quite dry as well and quite flammable.”
Macnab’s team forecasts the Wildfire Danger Risk across the country, which remains “high” to “extreme” for the majority of the province this weekend.
The current conditions are no surprise to forecasters.
“There were a lot of concerns early on, particularly because this was a strong El Niño year,” Macnab explained. “We end up in these situations, particularly in the stronger El Niño years, where you have relatively high drought, and low snow packs. So you have fairly flammable areas particularly early in the year.”
Macnab said there was no shortage of energy for the Fort McMurray fire to grow – and for a fire that size it’s not uncommon to see “crown fires”, which “in their extreme, of course are not only burning things like the whole tree on fire, but they’re also creating their own energy and essentially hurling debris forward and creating spot fires ahead.”
Fairweather said firefighters can’t even fight a fire like that from the ground “for safety reasons”, but also because it’s ineffective. Instead air tankers and helicopters attack the head, while ground crews with bulldozers build up massive dirt guards.
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The same tactics have been used on another out of control fires that started near Fort St John, BC and moved into Alberta on May 5. Alberta crews have built 85 kilometres of dozer guard to try to contain the 16,700 hectare fire burning within Alberta boundaries.
“On May 7, Clear Hills County initiated the evacuation of 13 homes in the small community of Clear Prairie due to the unpredictable winds that reached over 70 km/h,” Fairweather explained.
Shortly after, the area west of Peace River received 15 millimetres of rain, and residents were allowed to return home – but remain on evacuation preparedness alerts.
The fire has not grown much since – thanks to the weather, and the hard work of aerial and ground crews working tirelessly to contain the blaze.
“The firefighters on the ground work extremely hard, running hose and working with hand tools such as axes and shovels,” Fairweather continued.
“It’s really gruelling work, and it takes a lot out of them, but it never ceases to amaze me to see them in such high spirits even after an extremely long day, and more so that they wake up willing and eager to get back out on the line the next day.”
“It really is amazing how dedicated to the job they are,” said Fairweather.
Neither the Fort McMurray fire or the Peace River fire are expected to receive rain any time soon, and temperatures throughout both regions are forecast to rise into the mid-twenties by early next week. The type of conditions that are not ideal for wildfire fights.
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