Fort McMurray

cory

Tree House enthusiast
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Aug 23, 2008
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Pretty sad, mindblowing situation going on in Alberta. Interested to hear what perspectives THers have on it.
 
Usual Facebook things from my area, from "prayers for the victims" to "bad karma because of the oilfields".
 
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Steve, that is crazy footage around 1.40.

I was wondering about the karma thing.
 
No shit. But in a way? There's a lot of talk about more frequent and brutal boreal forest fires because of ......you guessed it........climate change. That's not talk from the local pub, that's talk from government officials specifically about the Fort Mac fire.

It's a crying shame and my thoughts and best wishes go out to all those affected by the fires. And a lot of us will be affected by these fires as the one entity that's not going to stand the loss is the insurance industry.
 
I wish i was up there.

No real opinion from me, just put the fire out.

There was an interesting show on CBC radio yesterday about the strategies employed and how complicated the whole thing is.

One issue they touched on was how much fertilizer is present in flame retardant and how putting down large amounts of it can negatively affect the natural re growth cycle of the boreal forest. Possibly allowing invasive or 'weed' type plants to regrow quicker than they should and smother out the natural re growing of say Jack pines. They also touched on how fires are part of the natural cycle of the boreal forest, but since average temps have been on the steep rise in recent years the fires have become much more frequent and intense.

Jack pine have a seed that's covered in 'wax' and won't germinate until after a fire melts it off. They've evolved to deal with fire.
 
A terrible thing. I have to wonder why people are driving around through the on fire zone, unless they are evacuating. I pretty regularly see people driving in hazardous floods for no good reason other than they ran out of cigarettes or something, so the vid makes me wonder.
 
The whole climate change and bushfire talk is going on in Australia as well, how fires will be more frequent and hotter.
As I've learned a 'normal' bushfire is ok for fire adapted ecology, but these raging super intense fires are not, they sear everything so badly the soil is sterilized and the trees are heated beyond the level at which they would normally recover in a few years and totally die.
Ive sen areas where bushfire moved through fast and didn't have a lot of fuel to sustain it for long enough to get super hot and things three years on are very green.
The other factor that messes things up is the combination of weird patterns, hot, when it shouldn't be, excess low humidity, delayed rains, drought...

Amazing no-one has been hurt, I pray that may continue!
 
No recent lightening strikes in the Fort McMurray area so speculation the fire was man made.

We had a fire here in our Manitoba Boreal forest a few years back . Luckily no towns were in the way but damage was intense. Heavy spruce and pine forest burning under strong winds with plus 90 F/30 C temps burn so hot that the fire makes its own weather like lightening, tornadoes.
That fire burnt an area the size of Vermont.

A couple of "a- holes" from Vancouver B.C. tweeted they hope Alberta and the oil sands burns to the ground because they caused the problem in the first place.
Those guys better fear for their lives....
 
I just don't understand people who want to see 'signs' in disasters. Self righteous dickheads.

The videos of the ember attacks when people are driving near the fire is the scariest. That's what causes all the houses to burn when they look to be so far away from the actual fire.
One clip on NBC news mentioned and showed thousands of dead trees...that can't be helping either.
 
This is a possible reality here. This fire is sparking high interest due to our millions of dead trees. I think a lot of Canada has the same dead tree issue. As do many states here in the US. One good f ire is all it is going to take to burn huge portions of forest or states in general
 
No pine beetle up at Fort Mac.
This is the Boreal Forest..
Mostly spruce, jack pine, balsam fir and tamarack. If any dead trees are seen by outside sources they're not dead, they're just tamarack (larch ) with dead brown winter needles. They're just starting to green up now.
This fire was man made and with perfect conditions of hot weather and strong winds the conifer burn like gasoline.
 
Yup, green burns too... But you lost a shat load of aspen in different provinces as I understand it. As well as some conifer in BC.
Don't need pine beetle for trees to die. Drought and unseasonably warm temps help.
We are losing more than conifer here Willyard... Pine beetles don't eat oaks. :P
And yes, I know this is about the 2002 drought :P
http://www.nrcan.gc.ca/forests/climate-change/forest-change/17785
 
Not all of Canada is covered by the Boreal Forest. Any fuel wood from drought or insects is not a problem in the Boreal Forest.
Funny how little most people know of the world's largest forest.
 
Regardless, my point was, that fire is really freaking people out where I live, because of it's severity. It is a good example of how bad it can get in the right conditions. Dead or not. We happen to have a shat load of dead. So people see this fire and are really concerned how bad it can get here with our fuel load of quite dead trees. Concerned before yes, but more so now.
 
Living with trees has its risks alright I see it all the time up here in Thompson dead center in the heart of the Boreal Forest.
Like Fort Mac we only have one highway into our community surrounded by thousands of square miles of heavy forest that deer can't even adapt too.

My advice is all communities at risk of forest fire should have a wide perimeter of forest logged out to be used as a fire break. That's what Fort Mac should have done years ago. Hard to do though as with the desolate tar sands in the background you want to make your community look as green as possible.
 
The new studies now show that the red forest actually burns with a lower intensity than the green trees. Sure, the red trees are dry, but most of the volatile oils and resins are gone. Running crown fire actually stops in a red stand.

An old forester explained to me that the red trees are just part of nature. After the 1910 edict of "all fires out by 10 am", the trees and brush that would have burned up were left to grow. Logging was shut down, more land was closed to human impact. So now mother nature is turning them red and burning them.

Catastrophic fires have been happening since trees were invented. We just live in the trees now.

The big blow up of 1910, and the Pestigo disaster of the 1800's in Wisconsin.
 
Fire makes our Boreal Forest healthy. About every 150 years it's completely burned in patches of rotation .
We do have the odd big spruce tree that have escaped the fires and lived to be 300 years or more.

As long as forest land is protected as a park and fires and logging is kept out with people living in them we will have problems.
 
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