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2016 Fort McMurray wildfire

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2016 Fort McMurray wildfire
Horse River Fire[1][2]
Fort McMurray residents evacuating along Highway 63 as the fire encroaches on the area
Date(s)May 1, 2016 – present[3] (MDT)
LocationWood Buffalo, Alberta
Northern Saskatchewan
Canada
Statistics
Burned area589,552 hectares (1,456,810 acres)[4]
Land useBoreal forest, Residential, Oil Sands
Impacts
Deaths0 (direct)[5]
2 (indirect)[6]
Non-fatal injuries0[5]
Structures destroyed2,400[7]
665 work camp units[8]
Damage$3.58 billion[9]
Map
2016 Fort McMurray wildfire is located in Alberta
2016 Fort McMurray wildfire
Location in Alberta

On May 1, 2016, a wildfire began southwest of Fort McMurray, Alberta, Canada. On May 3, it swept through the community, destroying approximately 2,400 homes and buildings and forcing the largest wildfire evacuation in Albertan history.[7][10] It continued to spread across northern Alberta and into Saskatchewan,[11] consuming forested areas and impacting Athabasca oil sands operations.[12][13] The fire spread across approximately 590,000 hectares (1,500,000 acres) before it was declared to be under control on July 5, 2016.[4] It is the costliest disaster in Canadian history.[14][9]

Progression

The wildfire burning near Fort McMurray on May 1, 2016

A local state of emergency was initially declared on May 1 at 9:57 p.m. (03:57 UTC May 2) with the Centennial Trailer Park, as well as the neighbourhoods of Prairie Creek and Gregoire under a mandatory evacuation.[15][16] The evacuation orders for the two neighbourhoods were reduced to a voluntary stay-in-place order by the night of May 2 as the fire moved southwest and away from the area.[17][18] However, the mandatory evacuation order was reinstated and expanded to 12 neighbourhoods on May 3 at 5:00 p.m. (23:00 UTC),[19] and to the entirety of Fort McMurray by 6:49 p.m. (00:49 UTC May 4).[10][20] A further order covering the nearby communities of Anzac, Gregoire Lake Estates, and Fort McMurray First Nation was issued at 9:50 p.m. on May 4 (03:50 UTC May 5).[21] It has been reported that 88,000 people were successfully evacuated, with no reported fatalities or injuries,[5] but two people were killed in a vehicular collision during the evacuation.[22] Despite the mandatory evacuation order, staff at the water treatment plant remained in Fort McMurray in order to provide firefighters with water.[23]

On May 4, the Regional Municipality of Wood Buffalo reported the communities of Beacon Hill, Abasand and Waterways had suffered "serious loss".[24] The Government of Alberta declared a provincial state of emergency, and said 1,600 buildings had been destroyed by the fires.[25] It was estimated that 10,000 hectares (25,000 acres) of land had been burned.[26] Evacuees who travelled north of Fort McMurray were advised to stay where they were, and not to come south on Highway 63 as the fire was still burning out of control.[24] A boil-water advisory was issued for the entire area just after 11 a.m. (17:00 UTC).[25] At 4:05 p.m. (22:05 UTC) the fire crossed Highway 63 at Highway 69, south of Fort McMurray, and threatened the international airport, which had suspended commercial operations earlier in the day.[24][27] The fire also forced the re-location of the Regional Emergency Operations Centre, which was originally in the vicinity of the airport.[28] On May 4, the fire was found to be producing lightning and pyrocumulus clouds due to its heat and large size, which added to the risk of more fires.[29] The fires became large enough to create a firestorm, creating its own weather in the form of wind influxes and lightning.[30]

Satellite imagery of the burn scar left by the wildfire on May 4, 2016

The fire continued to spread south on May 5 across 85,000 hectares (210,000 acres) and forcing additional evacuations in the communities of Anzac, Gregoire Lake Estates and the Fort McMurray First Nation. These communities had accepted over 8,000 people during the initial evacuations.[26][28][31] The Government of Alberta announced a plan to airlift approximately 8,000 of 25,000 people who had evacuated to oil sands work camps north of Fort McMurray, with assistance from a Royal Canadian Air Force Hercules aircraft, and other planes owned by energy companies operating in the oil sands. Government officials would also examine the potential for evacuations via Highway 63 during a flyover.[26] 1,100 personnel, 45 helicopters, 138 pieces of heavy equipment and 22 air tankers were being employed to fight the fire.[31]

On May 6, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police began leading convoys to move 1,500 vehicles from oil sand work camps north of Fort McMurray, south along Highway 63 to Edmonton.[32] The fire continued to grow out of control, spreading to 100,000 hectares (250,000 acres) by May 6,[32][33] and 156,000 hectares (390,000 acres) by May 7.[34] As the fire grew to the northeast, the community of Fort McKay, which hosted 5,000 evacuees from Fort McMurray, was itself put under an evacuation notice. The fire was anticipated to double in size, and reach the Saskatchewan border to the east.[35][36]

The wildfire continued to spread through remote forested areas in the following week, reaching oilsand work camps south of Fort MacKay, forcing the evacuation of 19 oil sites and camps with approximately 8,000 workers. One lodge with 665 units was destroyed.[37][38] The fire continued to grow, from 285,000 hectares (700,000 acres) on May 16 to 504,443 hectares (1,246,510 acres) on May 21 and even spread across 741 hectares (1,830 acres) in Saskatchewan.[39] While the fire moved away from Fort McMurray, two explosions and poor air quality continued to prevent residents and rebuilding crews from returning to the town.[40] By May 18, the fire had grown to 423,000 hectares (1,050,000 acres) and expanded into Saskatchewan.[41][42] By mid-June, rain and cooler temperatures helped firefighters contain the fire, and on July 4, 2016, the fire was declared under control.[4][43] The wildfire is expected to take months to extinguish,[44] while it is expected to burn underground throughout the winter.[45]

Response and aid

BC government reply
File:Alberta Sheriff.jpg
Alberta Sheriffs were deployed to assist the response effort

The Government of Alberta declared a provincial state of emergency for Fort McMurray and issued a formal request for assistance from the Canadian Armed Forces.[46][47] The government and the Department of National Defence signed a memorandum of understanding on May 4, detailing required assistance and use of helicopters for rescue operations.[10] Shortly after, a CC-130 Hercules departed CFB Trenton and helicopters were dispatched to the affected area.[48] Alberta also requested assistance from the Government of Ontario, and Ontario committed to sending 100 firefighters and 19 supervisory staff, coordinated through the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre.[10] Other provinces across the country offered support.[48] On May 5, four CL-415 water bombers from Quebec's SOPFEU (fr) took off from the province to aid in the firefighting effort.[49] Royal Canadian Mounted Police coordinated and provided the bulk of the security response with assistance from both Alberta Fish and Wildlife and the Alberta Sheriffs Branch.

Australia, Israel, Mexico, the Palestinian Authority, Russia, the Republic of China, and the United States offered international assistance in battling the fire, though the offers were turned down by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. Trudeau said that while the offers were appreciated, they were unnecessary as firefighters from other Canadian provinces were gaining control of the situation.[50][51] South Africa sent 301 firefighters at the request of the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre at the end of May.[52] The firefighters were trained during the month of April at a boot camp, in order how to learn to use special hoses instead of the leather padded wooden sticks known as "firebeaters" they typically use in their home country due to a lack of water.[53] Less than a week after being deployed the South Africans went on strike over a wage dispute and were demobilized. Alberta Premier Rachel Notley vowed to address the issue and ensure that the firefighters were paid a minimum of C$11.20 per hour as required by the province's labour laws, rather than the C$15 per day allowance specified in their contract with their South African employer.[54]

The Alberta government is providing an initial $1,250 per adult and $500 per dependent to cover living expenses for those who have evacuated.[55] On May 4, the provincial government committed to match donations made to the Canadian Red Cross, as well as to donate an additional $2 million as seed money;[56] the federal government pledged to match all donations to the Canadian Red Cross the next day,[26] with a deadline set to May 31. As of May 9, $54 million has been donated to the Red Cross, not including matching government contributions.[57]

On May 4, Public Safety Canada activated the International Charter Space and Major Disasters, thus providing for the charitable and humanitarian re-tasking of the diverse satellite assets of fifteen space agencies.[58] Later, Edmonton's Capital Region Housing Corporation (CRHC), along with the City of Edmonton, the Alberta Residential Landlord Association, and Yardi Canada Ltd., announced a partnership to create a registry of rental properties for Fort McMurray evacuees.[59] The non-profit initiative will offer this service free of charge to landlords for the next six months. Some landlords have offered incentives to wildfire evacuees, including reduced security deposits, reduced rent, or a couple months free rent.[60][61]

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau visited Fort McMurray on May 13 to survey the damage and promised ongoing aid from the federal government in the coming months.[62] The Governor General, David Johnston, and Sophie, Countess of Wessex, met with first responders and visited the ruins of the Beacon Hill neighbourhood of Fort McMurray on June 24, 2016.[63]

A benefit concert, Fire Aid for Fort McMurray, is set to be held in Edmonton at Commonwealth Stadium on June 29 to raise funds for Fort McMurray residents, with funds going to Fort McMurray United Way. The lineup includes the Albertan artists Nickelback, Ian Tyson, and Corb Lund, as well as Canadian artists Blue Rodeo and Dean Brody, among others.[64][65] WWE professional wrestlers Kevin Owens and Tyler Breeze, both of whom were born in Canada, set up a GoFundMe campaign to raise money for the Canadian Red Cross.[66] The campaign was initially set at a goal of $30,000, but this was later raised to over $70,000.[67]

On June 14, 2016, the Government of Alberta announced its partnership with the Adventist Development and Relief Agency of Canada (ADRA Canada) in opening the Alberta Wildfire Donation Centre. [68] ADRA Canada accepted the responsibility of managing all material donations for Fort McMurray. Their contract with the provincial government is for the duration of six months, ending on November 30, 2016. Throughout this contract, ADRA Canada would accept all material donations, sorting through donations and preparing them for shipment to distribution centres in Fort McMurray for residents to access.

Cause and contributing factors

An official cause of the fire has not been determined to date, but it is suspected to be human caused, starting in a remote area 15 kilometres (9.3 mi) from Fort McMurray.[26][69]

During the start of the fire, an unusually hot, dry air mass was in place over Northern Alberta, which brought record-setting temperatures to Fort McMurray. On May 3, the temperature climbed to 32.8 °C (91 °F),[70] accompanied by relative humidity as low as 12%.[71] The situation intensified on May 4 when temperatures reached 31.9 °C (89 °F)[70] and winds gusted to 72 km/h (45 mph).[72] This significantly contributed to the fire's rapid growth.[10] The winter preceding the fires was drier than usual, leaving a paltry snowpack, which melted quickly. Combined with the high temperatures, this created a "perfect storm" of conditions for an explosive wildfire.[73][74]

Daniel Thompson, a fire research scientist with Natural Resources Canada in Edmonton, told Bloomberg News that the natural El Niño cycle led to a dry fall and winter season along with a warm spring. The weather condition affects fires in a number of regions including Indonesia and northwest United States and Canada. Similar events occurred in 1997–1998.[75] Fire is a natural and necessary component of boreal forest ecosystems.

Controversy arose over the discussion that climate change is among the factors causing the fire, particularly given the role that Fort McMurray plays in Alberta's oil sands industry. Some have called it "insensitive" to discuss global warming at such a time, while others have argued that this crisis makes it "more important" to talk about a correlation between human-influenced climate change and wildfires.[76] Canada's politicians and scientists have both cautioned that individual fires cannot specifically be linked to climate change, but agree that it is part of a general trend of more intense wildfires.[77]

Damage and other impacts

Satellite images of the fire at day (May 3, 2016) overnight (May 5, 2016), and its smoke impacts across North America.
Aerial view

Communities and infrastructure

Super 8 motel destroyed by the fire

Initial estimates from May 4 indicated that 1,600 structures in Fort McMurray were destroyed. Firefighters worked through May 6 and 7 to hold the line and protect the downtown and remaining homes in Fort McMurray. Damages occurred to the town's power grid.[78] On May 9, this figure was revised to 2,400 structures, and about 85 to 90 percent of the community was reported undamaged.[79] Overnight on May 16–17, two explosions occurred in the Thickwood and Dickensfield neighbourhoods, damaging ten buildings and destroying three.[8]

As of 11:55 a.m. MDT on May 6, the Regional Municipality of Wood Buffalo had reported the following damage to Fort McMurray's neighbourhoods and nearby communities:[24]

  • Anzac – 12 structures lost in the hamlet approximately 36 km (22 mi) to the southeast
  • Airport – minor damage to outer structures, primary infrastructures intact
  • Abasand – 50 percent loss of homes
  • Beacon Hill – 70 percent loss of homes
  • Dickinsfield – Two houses lost
  • Downtown – One house lost
  • Draper – Damage under assessment in this community adjacent to Fort McMurray
  • Grayling Terrace – Four houses lost and six damaged
  • Gregoire – Centennial Trailer Park, Super 8 Hotel, Government of Alberta bunkhouse, and Metis Local 408 lost
  • North Parsons – Unfinished school lost
  • Saline Creek – Unaffected
  • Saprae Creek – approximately 30 percent of this hamlet, 11 km (6.8 mi) to the east, has experienced significant damage
  • Stone Creek – active fire zone
  • Oil sands – Active fire zone with destruction of one of the workers camp
  • Timberlea – 13 trailers lost
    • Blackburn Drive – Three structure fires
    • Walnut Crescent – approximately 15 structure fires
    • Stone Creek - approximately 225 homes lost
  • Thickwood – One house lost, Two town homes lost
  • Waterways – 90 percent loss of homes
  • Wood Buffalo – Estimated 100 homes lost

As of May 18, assessment of the damage to the community found that of 19,244 structures assessed, 1,921 were destroyed, 17,156 were approved for occupation, 121 were limited to restricted use, 39 were unsafe to occupy, and 7 were still to be inspected.[80]

Because the water treatment workers pumped untreated water into the municipal water system in order to supply firefighters with enough water to do their jobs, almost the entire Fort McMurray area remained under a boil-water advisory as of June 6.[23] The advisory had been lifted for the lower Fort McMurray townsite on June 4; most of the rest of the area would see the advisory lifted in the following weeks:[81]

  • June 10: Grayling Terrace
  • June 16: Thickwood, Wood Buffalo, Dickinsfield, Timberlea, Stone Creek, Parsons Creek North
  • June 30: Gregoire, Mackenzie Park, Prairie Creek Residential, Saline Creek, Saline Plateau, Airport Lands, Saprae Creek Estates
  • July 15: Anzac, Anzac Truckfill, Fort McMurray No. 468 First Nation, Gregoire Lake Estates

As of August 17, the boil water advisory has been lifted in all areas serviced by the Fort McMurray water treatment plant. The areas of Abasand, Beacon Hill and Waterways were the last neighbourhoods with a boil water advisory in effect, and although it had been lifted, those neighbourhoods do not have active water service due to damages.[81]

Oil sands operations

The wildfire also halted oil sands production at facilities north of Fort McMurray. Shell Canada shut down output at its Albian Sands mining operation, located about 70 kilometres north of Fort McMurray. The company said its priority was to get employees and their families out of the region, and provide capacity at its work camp for some of the evacuees. Shell also provided its landing strip to fly employees and their families to Calgary or Edmonton and has provided two teams to support firefighting efforts in the area.[82]

Suncor Energy and Syncrude Canada also scaled back operations. Suncor's Millennium and North Steepbank mines are two of the largest and oldest oilsands mining operations in the Fort McMurray area, and Syncrude's Mildred Lake oilsands mine is located 35 kilometres north of Fort McMurray. The companies have accommodated another 2,000 evacuees each at their work camps.[82] On May 7, Syncrude shut down all site and processing operations, removing 4,800 employees from the area. A quarter of Canada's oil production, equal to approximately one million barrels of oil a day, was halted as a result of the fire.[13] The lost output is estimated to cost the Albertan economy $70 million per day, and was a contributing factor to rises in global oil prices.[38] The scaled back operations, along with a refinery outage in Edmonton, caused many gas stations to run out of gas throughout Western Canada.[83]

On May 16, all 665 rooms at Blacksands Executive Lodge, a work camp, burned in the wildfire. Earlier that day, about 8,000 people were ordered out of 19 camps; about 6,000 remained. By May 17, the fire appeared to reach the Noralta Lodge, a few kilometres east of Blacksands.[84]

Financial

Initial insurance payouts are estimated to total as much as CAN$9 billion if the entire community has to be rebuilt.[14] Insured damage was estimated to have reached $3.58 billion as of July 7, 2016, making the wildfire the most expensive disaster in Canadian history, surpassing the 1998 ice storms in Quebec ($1.9 billion) and the 2013 Alberta floods ($1.8 billion).[9][14] The 2011 Slave Lake wildfire, which destroyed one-third of the town of Slave Lake, cost approximately $750 million and was the most expensive fire-related disaster in Canadian history. The larger damage estimates are a result of Fort McMurray being 10 times the size of Slave Lake.[14] A further estimate based on current damage estimated insurance payouts reaching as high as $4.7 billion.[85]

Census enumeration

Statistics Canada suspended enumeration activities for the 2016 Census in the Fort McMurray area on May 5. Alternative means to collect data from its residents were to be determined at a later date.[86] Shortly after re-entry, residents were encouraged to complete their census form online or over the phone; however door-to-door enumeration continues to be suspended.[87]

Residential re-entry

On May 18, the Alberta government provisionally announced a phased re-entry of residents into Fort McMurray starting on June 1 and ending by June 15, given that a set of key conditions is met, including: that the wildfire no longer poses a threat and that hazardous areas can be secured; that local government can be re-established; and that essential services such as emergency services, transportation, utilities and essential businesses can be re-established, as well as the infrastructure that supports these services.[80][88][89] Some undamaged homes were declared unsafe for reoccupation, due to contamination from arsenic and heavy metals.[90]

Schedule

Residents were allowed to re-enter Fort McMurray and surrounding communities according to a schedule broken down into residential zones. These zones are:[91]

  • Zone 1 (June 1) – Lower Townsite, Anzac, Fort McMurray 468 First Nation, Gregoire Lake Estates
  • Zone 2 (June 2) – Parsons Creek, Stone Creek, Timberlea, Eagle Ridge, Dickensfield
  • Zone 3 (June 3) – Thickwood, Wood Buffalo
  • Zone 4(a) (June 3) – Gregoire, Prairie Creek, Saprae Creek Estates
  • Zone 4(b) (June 4) – Grayling Terrace, Draper[80][91][92]
    • Zone 4(b) Restricted neighbourhoods (Visits only June 8) – Waterways, Abasand, Beacon Hill[93][94]

See also

References

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