Fort McMurray Wild Fire

[sandorski]

Bank of Montreal guestimating insurance costs could go up to $9 billion.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/fort-mcmurray-insurance-cost-1.3568113

I'm reading people talk about how this will be great for the economy. Ya, that money has to come from somewhere... Good luck to the half dozen or so major banks/insurers that may go insolvent. The town's in the middle of nowhere so an insurer or two may be carrying more coverage than others.

Also, apparently a new school burned down, and a hotel at the airport.

There will need to be Government Funds brought into the rebuild. Even before the rebuild a lot of $ is going to be needed to House and Feed all these displaced people. It will stimulate Alberta's economy for sure, but at a great cost.

 

[Imp]

There will need to be Government Funds brought into the rebuild. Even before the rebuild a lot of $ is going to be needed to House and Feed all these displaced people. It will stimulate Alberta's economy for sure, but at a great cost.

Not to mention the EI/welfare that will have to be paid out to all the people with no jobs now.

The property values pique my interest the most... I heard of houses in the $750k+ region during the oil boom just a year and a half back. Three or four major developments are now essentially gone.

 

[sdifox]

Wasn't talking about prop planes.... Was referring to old WWII planes. They are not safe. I have an audio recording of radio traffic of one that went down here in Colorado. I recorded that shit on my scanner! And it happens all too often.

...

Old WWII planes were prop planes... There were very few jet planes and they were all German.

And you think a 70 year old plane going down is a surprise?

 

[Imp]

NASA image from yesterday. Looks like it's from fairly early in the day because it hasn't reached the airport yet.

http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/NaturalHazards/view.php?id=87988

And it grew from ~10k hectares to 80k hectares today.

 

[BrainEater]

I've worked up there.
After watching some of the news videos , a lot of what I remember is totally gone.

As a 'boomtown' Fort Mac is literally cut into the trees fast like.....Most neighborhoods were surrounded by trees.Even downtown.

As if things up there were not sh1tty enough.

 

[sandorski]

I've worked up there.
After watching some of the news videos , a lot of what I remember is totally gone.

As a 'boomtown' Fort Mac is literally cut into the trees fast like.....Most neighborhoods were surrounded by trees.Even downtown.

As if things up there were not sh1tty enough.

Lived there back in the late 70's for 4 years. You drive through forest for 5 hours then suddenly there's a city. The forest came right up to peoples property lines, although large areas were cleared for more homes to be built. I was just a kid then, so it seemed kinda cool, in retrospect it's rather crazy though, just how isolated it is.

 

[sdifox]

I worry about the tailing ponds.

 

[burninatortech4]

...

Old WWII planes were prop planes... There were very few jet planes and they were all German.

And you think a 70 year old plane going down is a surprise?

The Gloster meteor was british. Sorry to nitpick but "all german" is incorrect.

Sent from my SM-G900V using Tapatalk

 

[Jodell88]

A comparison of the size of the area burned so far to various cities.

http://imgur.com/a/11OP7

 

[sdifox]

The Gloster meteor was british. Sorry to nitpick but "all german" is incorrect.

Sent from my SM-G900V using Tapatalk

Fair enough. Though I wonder why it isn't spelled Gloucester.

 

[shortylickens]

Saw some recent pics on Imgur.

Place looks like Beirut. They're gonna need a LOT of government aid when everything settles down.

 

[Imp]

Lived there back in the late 70's for 4 years. You drive through forest for 5 hours then suddenly there's a city. The forest came right up to peoples property lines, although large areas were cleared for more homes to be built. I was just a kid then, so it seemed kinda cool, in retrospect it's rather crazy though, just how isolated it is.

It looks like the 6 (?) lane highway through the middle of town is what saved downtown and a big chunk of the area to the south-east. Downtown is supposedly not as much wood construction too.

I worry about the tailing ponds.

Chill, bro.

And those soupy, bird-killing tailings ponds? “They’re not flammable,” Klassen says.

It may well be the only thing about an oil sands operation that isn’t.

http://www.macleans.ca/news/canada/could-the-oil-sands-catch-fire/

Fire seems to be mainly heading south and east. Probably due to the winds.

 

[sdifox]

It looks like the 6 (?) lane highway through the middle of town is what saved downtown and a big chunk of the area to the south-east. Downtown is supposedly not as much wood construction too.



Chill, bro.



http://www.macleans.ca/news/canada/could-the-oil-sands-catch-fire/

Fire seems to be mainly heading south and east. Probably due to the winds.

Not talking about tailing pond catching fire. Rather the lining breaching and leaking that shit into the Athabasca.

 

[Gooberlx2]

https://youtu.be/PCc1FvZ3g0Q?t=1m30s

Pretty crazy. Poor guy on the bike must've felt like he was getting cooked.

 

[Jodell88]

https://youtu.be/PCc1FvZ3g0Q?t=1m30s

Pretty crazy. Poor guy on the bike must've felt like he was getting cooked.

Saw that earlier.

The crazy thing about that video was how quickly the flames grew and calmed down.

The firefighters who fight wildfires have my utmost respect.

 

[sandorski]

https://youtu.be/PCc1FvZ3g0Q?t=1m30s

Pretty crazy. Poor guy on the bike must've felt like he was getting cooked.

Damn. What caught my eye were the bushes in peoples front yards starting to flame up as they passed.

 

[Brian Stirling]

What I don't get is why so many people decided to leave when the fire is burning there ass. This isn't like hurricane Katrina with lots of old and poor this is a tar sands town with younger people that aren't so poor -- why did they not leave earlier? And it's not like there millions of people to evacuate so if they'd started leaving even 6 hours earlier there would have been no traffic issues like we see in many of the videos.

Piss poor management by the local and national police forces and utter brain dead stupidity on all the idiots that waited till the fire was burning there ass.


Brian

 

[Jodell88]

What I don't get is why so many people decided to leave when the fire is burning there ass. This isn't like hurricane Katrina with lots of old and poor this is a tar sands town with younger people that aren't so poor -- why did they not leave earlier? And it's not like there millions of people to evacuate so if they'd started leaving even 6 hours earlier there would have been no traffic issues like we see in many of the videos.

Piss poor management by the local and national police forces and utter brain dead stupidity on all the idiots that waited till the fire was burning there ass.


Brian

http://edmontonjournal.com/news/local-news/a-timeline-of-the-fort-mcmurray-wildfire

 

[BoomerD]

I saw parts of this vid on tonight's news:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aC2iPvXAggM

Fucking scary as hell.

 

[sandorski]

What I don't get is why so many people decided to leave when the fire is burning there ass. This isn't like hurricane Katrina with lots of old and poor this is a tar sands town with younger people that aren't so poor -- why did they not leave earlier? And it's not like there millions of people to evacuate so if they'd started leaving even 6 hours earlier there would have been no traffic issues like we see in many of the videos.

Piss poor management by the local and national police forces and utter brain dead stupidity on all the idiots that waited till the fire was burning there ass.


Brian

There is only 1 highway in and out of town, 60k+ residents, the fire was under control at one time, when it did flare up again it spread ridiculously fast, you just don't call for evacuation all willy nilly.

 

[IronWing]

I saw parts of this vid on tonight's news:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aC2iPvXAggM

Fucking scary as hell.

There are some folks with bubbly paint and melted mirrors tonight.

 

[Imp]

I saw parts of this vid on tonight's news:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aC2iPvXAggM

Fucking scary as hell.

Pretty insane how many glowing hot embers are flying everywhere. Ever need to ask how a forest fire spreads and that explains it fairly well.

And the fire may be at Anzac at this point.

 

[JSt0rm]

Nature u scary.

 

[-slash-]

Here in the United States our forest fire fighting capability is dismal. We use old WWII planes FFS. We need to revamped our forest fire fighting techniques, add more 747's and other modern aircraft and clean up the national forests.

California is more than likely going to spark this year again.

The Evergreen Super Tanker cant get down low enough in steeper terrain to effectively distribute retardant. The DC-10 on the other hand is much more effective
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qG62sgvGBlY&index=109&list=LLW6p06navSpOqUn3xotG2vA

Got to watch them all last summer during Washingtons biggest fire season. The Forest Service decommissioned their fleet and it is now down mostly privately. No amount of retardant will stop a raging fire though. The biggest problem in the US is the way we fight fires, or dont. The idea is to let the fire get big enough to call in state resources followed by federal resources to get the federal money pumping into the suppression effort. It generally means small fires become large and unmanageable.

 

[John Connor]

You mentioned 747's, Jet Planes.

You took what I said out of context. I said, "add more 747's and other modern aircraft."

We hire Evergreen for the 747's. They use 747's in addition to old WWII prop planes.

Understand?