The Decibel - As Alberta burns, an election looms

Episode Date: May 17, 2023

Wildfires are raging across Alberta with early-season fires forcing thousands to evacuate their homes. Firefighters from across the country and the U.S., as well as the Canadian Armed Forces, are streaming in to battle the flames. Officials are predicting the worst is yet to come with high temperatures and no rain in the forecast.Meanwhile, a provincial election is right around the corner. United Conservative Party Leader Danielle Smith is trying to balance her role as premier with her political campaign for the job. And frustrations amongst some residents are growing.Reporter Carrie Tait from the Globe and Mail’s Calgary bureau is on the show to explain the political impacts of this natural disaster.Questions? Comments? Ideas? Email us at [e-mail]

Certainly, we are not out of the woods. I don't believe the worst is behind us. We need to be prepared and ensure that our resources are best placed where that fire danger is going to be most extreme. Christy Tucker is an information unit manager with Alberta Wildfire. She's describing the situation as fires rage across the province. Wildfires happen every year, but this year they're more severe and earlier than normal. All Albertans need to remain vigilant to the threat of wildfires. Under these conditions, a wildfire can start and spread easily anywhere in the province.

As the wildfires continue to burn, frustration is also growing. Like in the county of Grand Prairie. Your response was garbage on Friday. The neighborhood was more organized than any one of you, including bylaw. So let us do our jobs. A local resident who we all know who it is, I won't name him, got kicked out today. He had his own D6 in there before you guys did. And he was pushing dirt before you. Every emergency is going to be different. But when can I expect to go back?

And when can I expect to go back? My house isn't fortunate. I don't think so. When can I go back for four or five, six hours, a half day? You should really look at yourselves in the mirror when you go home tonight. The local people could have snuffed that fire in a matter of 12 hours. They weren't allowed in with their machinery to kill the fire. On Tuesday, it was announced that some residents in that area may soon be allowed back in. All of this is happening, though, in the middle of Alberta's provincial election campaign. Carrie Tate is a reporter in the Globe's Calgary Bureau. She's on the show to tell us how this season's wildfires are being politicized. I'm Aynika Raman-Wilms, and this

is The Decibel from The Globe and Mail. Carrie, thank you for being back on the podcast. Thank you for having me. So Alberta wildfires have burned more than 530,000 hectares of land so far this year, and that's compared with just over 450 hectares by this time last year. So there's a big difference here. How are residents responding to the fires? Well, they're doing exactly what they're supposed to be doing when there's a forest fire on your back door and it's get out.

There are rising tensions over people having to leave their homes. A lot of these fires are in areas where there's a lot of livestock and that's posing a different complicating problem than we've seen in the past. But for the most part right now, people are just trying to get out, get out to a safe spot. Can you tell me a little bit about those, the complications and the tensions that you mentioned there, Cara? Because I think someone like living in the city, you don't necessarily think about all the considerations of livestock and farmland. So what are some of those tensions? Well, we are seeing anger over being forced to evacuate. One of the big reasons I think behind that is when people had to leave Fort McMurray, we all saw those videos and those photos of people driving through a literal forest fire. There was, you know,

fire going by their windshield and they talked about the heat in the car and it was really traumatic. Getting out of town just in time. Getting the f*** out of Dodge. I can feel the heat here. This is insane. Holy f***. Oh, you can feel the heat. This, the fire wasn't right up against the road when they had to make daring escapes. There was none of that sort of added drama to it. They could see the fire in the distance, but it wasn't right on their windshield. And so there's questions of like, well, is it safe? Do I have to be out? And what amplifies that is a lot of the fires are in regions where people have cattle. Some of those people are still in calving season. So the cows and the heifers are having their babies.

And sometimes they need to be assisted. And this isn't, you know, like losing a pet. Keep in mind, this is their livelihood. They need to be there to feed to water. Because you can't necessarily pack up all your cows and move them like you can even a cat or a dog. Some of those animals have been evacuated, but it's adding to a frustration in some places. There are some farmers and ranchers who have heavy equipment, discers. They're like, imagine the big machines that like turn up the soil behind a tractor.

So some of those are going through pasture land that would maybe be dry grass to create fire breaks. You know, that's like another word for a fire guard. So some people are trying to protect whether it's their own property or sort of maybe their property in the community. They've got that type of machinery. So there are pockets of that. It's not necessarily like a resistance to evacuation order, but more an urgency within their own operations on their own farm. Or maybe they do have legitimate equipment that they can help out with. OK. And you said they're making fire breaks. So like for people who live in cities, Carrie, what's a fire break? Yeah, a fire break is just imagine like a fire's coming at you and then it runs out of fuel because maybe there's a natural one would be a river or maybe it's a highway or sometimes in a situation like this, they go out with heavy machinery, dozers like a bulldozer and knock down a bunch of trees and create a spot

where the fire just can't, hopefully can't burn through. Now, a strong wildfire can get up to a fire break and jump that. We've seen that whether it's a natural fire break or a man-made one. It's an attempt to try to protect and contain a fire. It's not foolproof. You mentioned some residents are staying behind if they have farms and cattle, especially that they need to attend to. Are they opting to build fire breaks then rather than, I guess, leave it in the hands of firefighters? It's a little of both. Some are.

There was an incident over the weekend where in Grand Prairie County where the fire chief came out and said, we're running a coordinated campaign. You know, we know you're trying to help us with the fires, but somebody on their own piece of heavy equipment, you know, the fire chief described it as a dozer, was cutting through trees. Came through the tree line opposite where the firefighters were working, unbeknownst to the firefighters, and almost hit the firefighters with a piece of equipment as well as the trees that were falling from the piece of equipment moving through the tree line. Our firefighters had to run to get out of the way. So not only did they almost hurt those firefighters, but then it was working against what those firefighters were doing. And that person in the dozer made the fire worse. So there was an appeal to please, we understand you're trying to help. But you know, there are air bombers in the sky in these types of campaigns that might be dropping fire retardant. Or in Fort McMurray, we saw them purposely flatten houses to create fire breaks. These are complicated efforts involving a lot of people and a lot of different

machinery. And while people have the best of intentions, absolutely, it can be really dangerous. How close are the fires to the homes? Because you mentioned something about people questioning, you know, is it safe? Do I really need to leave? But can't you see fires kind of coming at you or in the vicinity at least? Well, this is one of the things that makes this fire season so much different is that with Fort McMurray, again, is the prime example. There was one big fire. We knew where it was. Right now, there are fires threatening multiple communities at once in Alberta,

and not even like all up north. We're talking like some are south of Edmonton. That's so much different than what we've seen in the past. Now, how close are they getting to the houses? Some people have lost their homes. We've seen that in not just super remote communities. Right now, actually, there have been quite a few homes lost in Little Red River Cree Nation far up north. But there's been homes in communities not far from Edmonton that have been lost. Carrie, I want to ask you about the province's response. How prepared was Alberta to deal with these fires? Well, it's tricky. I mean, provinces are never prepared to deal with natural disasters. That's why they're so problematic.

There are steps that we can take. Alberta in the past had a team called the Rap Attack. They were an elite firefighting force that would rappel down and snuff out hotspots before, you know, a wildfire sort of took off. That was the idea. That force got caught in budget cuts in Alberta. And so there's a lot of questions and anger over that decision now, you know, in retrospect. it's difficult to say whether or not that force would have been able to put out some of these before they you know caught fire and became bigger problems but right now that's something that

people are pointing to the other thing is this isn't just one natural disaster this is fire all over the province's north and sort of central east part. So there are communities that are far, far, far, hundreds of kilometers away that are evacuating from each other. So you end up with the resources that you do have and then spreading them so thin over the province because there are so many fires. At the peak, there was around 100 wildfires. We don't send resources out to all 100 active wildfires. Some of them are meant to burn out. But there's something, you know, when you have evacuation orders in 11 or 17 or that many communities, and then you're taking

the resources that you have and spreading them so thin, it's so hard to prepare for that. That's one of the things that's really unusual about this year's fire season. Isn't necessarily, you know, that there's a fire or five fires, but that there the midst of a provincial election. The frontrunners are United Conservative Party, UCP leader Daniel Smith and NDP leader Rachel Notley. So how have the campaigns been affected by the wildfires? This has been a really, really interesting situation to watch play out right now. Now, in a calculated political sense, the fires have been, in a way, good for Danielle Smith. At the beginning of this campaign, I think even on day two, they had her away from the media, not taking questions. And it's kind of like, hey, you're in a campaign. What are you doing? Where are you? And this gives her a way to be out in front of a camera, you know, pointing at

a map, in a meeting, being busy, making premier decision type things, acting like the premier. You know, in the States, the line is looking presidential. So she can be out doing that and can take media questions focused on the fires because then they become government press conferences rather than walk a political minefield. There's a number of campaigns that suspended their operations during this. And part of that, you can't door knock in Drayton Valley because no one is in Drayton Valley. It's literally evacuated, that type of thing. The NDP suspended, I think, seven local campaigns in the ridings affected. Now, to put that in context, I think only one of those is a seat where they have a long shot at winning. So it's not like they put a lot of risk into suspending their campaign. The UCP also suspended in some of them. And on the flip side, it's not like they have much

of a risk. Those are pretty safe seats. Yeah. Let's let's stick on this politics track for another moment here, Carrie, because I want to ask you a little bit more about this. Danielle Smith only became premier of Alberta in October of last year, and she was voted in at a time when there was a lot of anger towards the previous provincial government's handling, especially of the COVID-19 pandemic. I mean, there was a lot of anger in particular towards the previous Premier, Jason Kenney, for the way that he put in restrictions and all those things. And so now we're here in another emergency situation in the province. How is this playing out for Smith? It's a little bit tricky to judge right now. Again, in the context of the politics, it seems to be going well.

Most people have abided by the evacuation orders. There are rising tensions, as we saw in Grand Prairie County, questioning, you know, the government's decisions, the experts on whether they need to be evacuated. Why can't people get permits to go back in to feed their livestock? Some people even going as far as comparing it to COVID, governments telling me what to do, treating me like a child. You want us to lose our homes, our livestock, everything we have, because bureaucracy, oh, hey, you know what?

This is like COVID all over again. We're going to lock you guys down, treat you like children. You can't do anything. We've dealt with this for three years and we're done. We're going back to our homes. And if I go in there and I die because I'm in the fire zone, that's on me. There's still an underlying current of, you know, questioning government and questioning authority. But it's not something that's at the point that it's going to like take down Danielle Smith in the same way that Jason Kenney was punished for his actions on COVID. But I guess why is that? Why won't this take her down? There's a couple of reasons. For the most part, the fire is in ridings that are safe UCP seats. Part of what took Jason Kenney down was anger from the left and the right.

This isn't really divided. This isn't quite a partisan issue. It's not enough people. It's still there's still something like I think today it's around 20,000 people evacuated. That's not enough to say, swipe somebody away. And in the end, fire is still more tangible for great swaths of people because you can still see that damage where even if thousands of people are dying, you don't see thousands of people dying. So they're not comparable situations. Okay. As part of the response to the wildfires as well, Daniel Smith did ask the federal government for help. And Prime Minister Trudeau is not a particularly popular figure in some parts of the province. How was how is it perceived that she asked the federal government to step in?

Daniel Smith took a couple days before she formally asked the federal government to step in. And there was questions of whether, you know, was she foot dragging, wondering if Alberta could handle this on their own? The thing is, this is pretty routine. It's not like you're going begging the feds to bail you out. This is a disaster. Nobody's thinking like, oh, I wish we didn't ask Justin Trudeau for help. Things are literally burning to the ground. So while Daniel Smith didn't issue this formal invitation to the feds to come in until, you know, a few days into the crisis. It's not as though the military at CFB Edmonton was sitting around, you know, not preparing for this. There's a routine to these types of disasters. And Bill Blair in Ottawa had said, you know, we're ready when you need it, just say the word. But I don't think the troops at CFB Edmonton were like sitting

around playing tiddlywinks. I'm pretty sure they were getting ready. They don't need the formal trigger when you know it's coming. We are still a couple of weeks out from election day, but can you give us a sense of the polls right now? How are things looking between Smith and Notley? What would you like? Where's your partisan heart? If you want a poll that has not Lee winning, I got some of those. If you want a poll that has Smith winning, we got those too. So we don't know. It's not funny having to cover this, try to sort this out. So we are going with the polls are close. There's going to be a lot of ridings that are super tight and we might not have a winner next Monday evening. Interesting. Well, the election is scheduled for May 29th. What do these wildfires mean, though, for voting, Carrie? Like if you've had to flee your home,

I mean, I'd imagine it'd be hard to get to the polls. It's going to be a little tricky if this keeps up. So we have, oh, two weeks, I believe. They can't postpone the entire election, like the premier or the chief electoral officer. There's no pause button on this. They will look at it riding by riding. And so in the communities where there's greater evacuation, it's not like even there's a button there to hit pause. They have to go to court. So we could end up with a couple of ridings. I think this would be an extreme decision where they do pause the election,

but the rest of us all go to the polls. So we would be waiting on those ridings. I wonder, because we're also talking about a heat dome now in this part of Western Canada, the really high temperatures even in May, has climate change factored into the discussion of why these fires are happening at all? No. And I do think there's good reason for that. And I think it's the same reason why it was sort of taboo during the Fort Mac crisis, that there are 20,000 people that are out of their homes right now and worrying about

whether their homes are there when they get back. They don't want to be having these conversations about climate change because they tend to turn into partisan fighting in Alberta, in lots of places, not just Alberta. And it's sort of don't speak ill of the dead, that type of feeling. So as soon as somebody would bring it up, it would be don't make this political. Don't try to take advantage of it. And that's not really the way Alberta has dealt with these types of crises before. So Carrie, what's the path forward here? How does Alberta get these fires under control? Rain, rain, rain. There's only one solution. Rain. You can't go out there with a bunch of fire trucks and helicopters and air bombers and get all of these out. That's not an option or this wouldn't be a crisis. We would just put out wildfires. So we need the weather to turn, winds to cooperate, all of that. And that's what makes them so unpredictable. Carrie, thank you so much for taking the time to explain all this to us today. Thanks for having me. Our interns are Our producers are David Crosby edits the show.

Adrian Chung is our senior producer and Angela Pachenza is our executive editor. Thanks so much for listening and I'll talk to you tomorrow.