The Decibel - How 2016 looms over the wildfires in Fort McMurray today

Episode Date: May 22, 2024

It has been eight years since the infamous Fort McMurray wildfire that levelled several neighbourhoods and businesses. As wildfires are once again on the rise in Western Canada, the sky was a familiar smoky orange last week in Fort McMurray as a fire crept closer to the city.The Globe’s Calgary reporter, Carrie Tait, tells us about the current fire, and explains how for many residents and officials, they’re feeling the lingering effects of what happened in 2016.Questions? Comments? Ideas? E-mail us at [e-mail]

I got to Fort McMurray on Wednesday and it was immediately apparent something was off. Myself and another photographer were the only people on the entire plane. And they were sending this empty plane up because there was demand for people getting out of Fort McMurray. So even before we left Calgary, the pressure that Fort McMurray was under was clear. The Globe's Carrie Tate was in Fort McMurray last week as a wildfire was burning at the edge of the city and neighborhoods were being evacuated. And when the evacuation order came down on Tuesday, the sky had that big orange mean glow. The smoke columns were there. Once you got into the city or approached the city,

it was really, really quiet, like unusually quiet. Now, about 68,000 people live in Fort McMurray and only about 6,000 were under the evacuation order. But many, many, many, many more left. Now, things seem to be heading in the right direction. People are allowed back home after the area saw some rain. But this fire is bringing back some difficult memories. Every person I spoke to while I was there and before I got there, their story of this fire started in 2016. When people were talking about the fire of 2024, they weren't specifically talking about 2024. Every story was with 2016 in the background.

It was almost like the 2016 fire was a bigger part of the 2024 fire than the actual fire itself. Today, Carrie explains the lingering effects of that massive fire in 2016 on Fort McMurray and how it's impacting the response to the fire today. I'm Maina Karaman-Wilms and this is The Decibel from The Globe and Mail. Carrie, thank you for being here today. Thank you for having me. Let's start then by talking about this current fire that is still burning near Fort McMurray. Carrie, what do we know about it and what's going on now?

There's actually good news for this situation. There was about 40 millimeters of rain since last Thursday, and the temperatures got really cool, which is excellent if you are a firefighter or if you live in the city. So the evacuation order lifted on Saturday. People were able to go back into town. And by Sunday, they changed the classification to being held, which means they don't expect it to extend beyond the perimeter. So it's great, though, in this moment. It's great for this specific fire, but it does not solve the rest of the summer. There's still a drought cycle that is pretty dominant in Alberta and in Western Canada, and a couple of good days rain, don't get rid of the months and months and months of drought. Yeah. Do we have any sense of how big this fire is or how close it is to Fort

McMurray? Just so we can get a kind of a sense of those numbers too. Again, 2016 is a great comparison. So the 2016 fire was 575,000 hectares. This was about or is about 20,000. So it is a tiny percent, but it's close to town. So the landmarks that they use are the landfill. It's about 5.5 kilometers away from the landfill, which is south of town, about four and a half from the major intersection you need to get to when you're evacuating. One of the most interesting things about this fire and the difference between 2016 is that it's burning in the old burns or basically following the path of the 2016 fire. And this really caught the firefighters off guard because they expected it to kind of mosey along.

You know, all that fuel had been mowed down in 2016, but it was so dry and the winds worked against them that this fire was still able to approach town, albeit on the ground, rather than from treetop to treetop. This is called like a ground fire instead of a crown fire, I think I've heard. That's right. So 2016 was a crown fire, and that's where you get those big, scary images of, you know, basically a forest on fire. And this was like a brush fire on the ground moving along. You also mentioned the drought and kind of the dry conditions that you've been seeing in Western Canada, Carrie. Can you elaborate a little bit on that? I guess what has been the case, you know, leading up to this fire that actually led it to burn in this way? So Agriculture Canada, the federal government keeps a drought monitor. And right now, even after

the moisture that we received in April, 95% of Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba are in either abnormally dry to extreme drought conditions. It is just a drought. 95%. 95%. And when you look up north in Alberta, that's where they get into the severe to extreme. And we see that in British Columbia. I think British Columbia's drought monitor at the end of April was something like 89%. I mean, there's no graceful way to say it. It is not good. Especially then you get a little bit of wind, you get warm days, and a fire can quite quickly take off.

I mean, Fort McMurray is not the only place that's already been evacuated. We saw Fort Nelson right now just over the border in British Columbia is still evacuated. Oh, OK. So we talked off the top to carry. You talked off the top about the big fire in 2016. I think a lot of us across Canada remember this fire in 2016 in Fort McMurray. But can you just remind us of what happened and how big was it? So the 2016 fire, of course, it was nicknamed the beast.

So even that alone gives you an idea of how people felt about it. And it happened so quickly. It was approaching the city. It looked as though things were OK. There were alerts. And then all of a sudden, not just one or two or five communities had to evacuate in Fort McMurray, the entire town, as well as the oil sands, parts of the oil sands. And so you had about 90,000 people trying to get out of the city with

only effectively one route south. Some people ended up fleeing north into the oil sands and those camps just to get out of the way of the fire. And what happened there as people were fleeing south, they literally had to drive through the fire with not just ash raining down on their windshields, but like actual fire. 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. Not zoomed in. Holy s***. This is f***ing crazy. And their vehicles were warm. They were trapped in their vehicles for hours and hours and hours as the traffic, you know, built up.

And it's a long way to anywhere out of Fort McMurray. People were running out of gas. You know, imagine you've got children and pets and they have to go to the washroom and they're hungry. And so you have that giant fire still looming in everyone's minds. And that fire, when it did get to Fort McMurray, it did go through town. It leveled parts of neighborhoods. Something like 2,400 homes were lost. The power, of course, all the utilities, all of that was out in Fort McMurray and people were evacuated for about a month.

That was sort of the minimum before you could get back in, not to return home, but to haul out your stinky freezer and your fridge and try to pick, you know, get your house back in order. Well, given that history, though, because you just kind of really described what it was like in 2016, it's pretty scary for a lot of people, right? So, you know, people that you spoke with in Fort McMurray, how are they feeling about this fire this year? Whether you were worried about this fire or not, you saw it through the lens of 2016. So I spoke with this woman, Gabriela, downtown. She was from Ecuador, and she had just arrived in Fort McMurray like two weeks before the 2016 fire. So she had, you know, a very clear memory of it as well. So now that you're under evacuation alert, and some places have evacuated, how do you feel?

Like, of course, scared, because now every time that you hear sirens, like every spring, summer, fire season, it's like just the bad memories. It's like, oh, what's going to happen? Like, you know, all those thoughts start to coming back to you. So that's the first. You can see the scar of the fire from, you know, where we were walking in Fort McMurray. And, you know, she couldn't go to work. She worked at Walmart because so many of the people had either left or the schools were closed and they had to be home with their kids. And you started hearing the sirens and everything.

What's going on? I was shaking for the five, five, five to ten minutes. Oh. You know, it's like react and say, okay, just start packing everything, putting everything in the truck because already was packed. But now we have to load everything. I spoke to one fellow. His name was Kyle Campbell, and he was very far from the evacuation zone in this fire.

Hi, puppy. Hi. Sorry, puppy. Hi. Sorry, I got your dogs riled up. Sorry to interrupt you. It's all good. My name is Kiri Tate. I'm a reporter with the Globe and Mail in Calgary, and I'm up reporting on fire and evacuation.

Oh, okay. I saw it looks like you're packing up. I was wondering if you'd be willing to chat with me about what you're doing, how you're feeling. Sure. Kyle had his trailer there with his all-terrain vehicles. He had a quad and a side-by-side. He had dogs barking everywhere and he was packing up ready to go. I have some hockey jerseys from growing up that, you know, I'd never get back if we left them. Like ones that you played in? He was also really chill. He was like, well, you know, I'd never get back if we left him. Like ones that you played in? He was also really chill.

He was like, well, you know, if we have to go, we have to go. He was probably the calmest person about it that I spoke to, but he was also still ready. Well, we weren't worrying. We weren't even packing. And then he started, like, I was out in the coldest side talking to neighbors there. And you, like, look over the house and it was like all you're seeing was smoke. So it was like sort of the smoke, that reality hit you.

Yeah, well, it just looked the same, right? It was like the same as kind of, I guess, a little bit of fear. So there's a little bit of fear, but... There's a little bit of fear. So I think the readiness was something that even if you were calm for this fire, you were prepared. We'll be right back. I also want to ask you about another resident that you spoke with, Carrie. This is Nancy Grant. Can you tell me what's her story?

Nancy was this lovely woman that I met in a community called Waterways. Hi. I'm well. How are you? Very good. Good. My name's Carrie Tate. And so Waterways is kind of right on the floodplain of the Clearwater River. And the fire would have, imagine it coming up over the hill, down and into the valley. That's, a lot of Waterways was wiped out in the 2016 fire.

We're coming up Franklin and I have pictures from across the bridge and just the hell of the south side of the bridge, just like in huge flames and stuff. And all we could think about is we had three kids in the house on night. So we got home in good time and then we got the kids and we got out. You just basically got out with the clothes on your back. That's, yeah, whatever the kids. Like you didn't even grab anything. No, I had my pictures upstairs on the bed. I had a box of pictures that I was going to run up and grab but then didn't even I didn't even have time

to go back up the stairs by the time I looked out the back door and I saw just from the legion like you couldn't even see the legion right there which is just the building yeah right there you couldn't even see the legion right there where the flag is it was just all just smoke and red and i just said to the kids like i don't even care if you've got anything now just get in the cars we have to leave so i didn't even you know just by the time they came back their house was gone oh we just we watched everybody catch on fire here we just kind of watched it go. As we were driving away, our house caught on fire.

Did you see your house on fire? No, I didn't turn around to look at it. We left, but then a couple hours later... But Waterways is her home, and they were among the people that rebuilt there. You know, she showed me around her yard. Today I'm going to put in some carrot and beet seeds and my pumpkins and things like that and put that all in the garden for, if I have to leave in the fall, I can still come back and make my pickles, right?

She kind of said, well, you know, I love it here. This is home. I want to live here. If I don't live here, I live somewhere else subject to other different variety of horrors. I mean, if you're not here, where are you going to go? You're going to go where there's wind? You're going to go where there's tornadoes, hurricanes, mudslides, rock slides? Where do you want to be? Because something's going to happen there. If it isn't today, they are still going to get it eventually. Now, this is a woman who is ultra prepared. After her experience in 2016, she now keeps go bags not just packed. She keeps them in a cargo box on the top of their vehicle.

So one for her, one for her husband, and one for their adult son who has special needs. They keep a flat of water in the car. And then when that orange glow hit the city on Tuesday and evacuation orders started, that's when she went and packed up more things. And how is Nancy feeling about the wildfire this year? The whole time I was speaking with her, she was rubbing her hands. She was quite nervous. My nerves are just shot.

Yeah, the PTSD is still, it's still strong. At different moments, she would like kind of tear up or sniffle. No, we've been through a lot of disasters. We've had floods. We've had fires. We've had, yeah, it's, sorry. It's okay. Take your time.

Do you want a hug? Do you need a hug? It's okay. Take your time. Do you want a hug? Do you need a hug? It's okay. Take your time. I mean, she's really well grounded and knows there's only a limited amount that you can do about it. But still, like, you can almost see it gnawing at her, kind of eating at her in the back of her head. And so how are officials responding this time? So if we look back at how the response was, I guess, in 2016 compared to now, what are we seeing here, Carrie? Well, this time officials had more time. So part of the reason they evacuated those

four communities is because they were trying to avoid a crush on the highway. It got people out of town in case there was going to be a crush of vehicles on the highway again, although there still was a crush, just not quite as threatening. And so this time they were able to go in and set up what are essentially giant sprinklers, run hoses into the rivers that do run through the city, and run sprinklers in communities where the fire would be approaching. And so it would bring up the humidity and water puts out fire. They sprayed fire retardant on 4.9 kilometers, basically, worth of the edge of the forest where the forest meets the city. And so the trees on the edge of a couple of these communities that were evacuated have this maroon rusty film on them. The fire chief Jody

Butts said it should hopefully provide about a month's worth of protection. So they were able to get in and do those actual physical things. They were able to build physical fire guards, stuff like that. But I mean, all of that work is excellent. It's the assist from the weather that really, really changed the game. How prepared is Fort McMurray now for large wildfires? That is a very good question. And I don't think there is a clear answer. Fort McMurray right now would say it is more prepared. And I would agree it is more prepared. But if a large crown fire is coming its way, there's not much Fort McMurray can do. The firefighters didn't expect this fire to be as aggressive as it was because it was a ground fire anyway.

So even when they're prepared, we're still learning things every time. The incident commander at this fire from Alberta Wildfire, the person who was sort of assigned to head up this effort, had said that this actually caught them a little bit by surprise how quickly it burned through the wreckage of the 2016 fire. Yeah, a little bit surprising of how volatile it burned. We weren't sure exactly how it was going to react until it got in there. We thought it would slow down. We knew we were going to see spread in there, but we did not expect it to burn as vigorous as it did. Fort McMurray is certainly more prepared. Part of that is that the 2016 fire provides protection, even though they were still caught off guard by the speed

at which and the aggressiveness of this fire burned through. But no city, no town that is that close to forests, I think, rests easy right now. Just very lastly here, Carrie, the immediate danger of this fire seems to have passed for now. But of course, it's only May, it's early in wildfire season, and there are other fires already burning. So how are things looking elsewhere in the country? So right now in Alberta, there's fewer than 50 fires. There's none that are out of control. Now that the Fort McMurray fire is being held. That's excellent. In British Columbia, there's about 120 wildfires. 12 of them are out of control, but there's only two that are classified as, in BC, they call them

wildfires of note, which means that they're threatening a community or there's like visible smoke, that sort of fear almost. And that's the two that are in the Fort Nelson area where about 5,000 people had to be evacuated. And at last count, I think 10 structures were damaged and four homes were lost. And they're preparing right now for reentry. The drought that I spoke about earlier sort of still lingers over. This is not a drought that's fixed by a few days of rain. Hopefully, though, you know, fingers crossed that that moisture does stick around the cooler temperatures, but the wind, warm weather,

a few days of that and the forest can be quite volatile again. So fingers crossed that this does not become the story of the summer. Yeah. Carrie, thank you so much for taking the time today. Thank you for having me. That's it for today. I'm Maina Karaman-Wilms. Our intern is Aja Sauter. Our producers are Madeline White, Cheryl Sutherland,

and Rachel Levy-McLaughlin. David Crosby edits the show. Adrian Chung is our senior producer, and Matt Frainer is our managing editor. Thank you so much for listening, and I'll talk to you soon.