• About
    • Which Energy Mix is this?
  • Climate News Network Archive
  • Contact
Celebrating our 1,000th edition. The climate news you need
No Result
View All Result
The Energy Mix
  • Canada
  • UK & Europe
  • Fossil Fuels
  • Ending Emissions
  • Community Climate Finance
  • Clean Electricity Grid
  • Cities & Communities
SUBSCRIBE
DONATE
  • Canada
  • UK & Europe
  • Fossil Fuels
  • Ending Emissions
  • Community Climate Finance
  • Clean Electricity Grid
  • Cities & Communities
SUBSCRIBE
DONATE
No Result
View All Result
The Energy Mix
No Result
View All Result
  FEATURED
EXCLUSIVE: Hydrogen is Up, Pieridae is Out as German Chancellor Preps for Canada Visit August 15, 2022
Historic Climate Bill Passes U.S. House, Goes to Biden for Signature August 15, 2022
BREAKING: U.S. Senate Passes Historic $369B Climate Package August 7, 2022
Researchers Point To ‘Dangerously Unexplored’ Risk of Global Climate Catastrophe August 2, 2022
Koch Network Pressures Manchin, Sinema as Advocates Praise ‘Game Changing’ Climate Deal August 2, 2022
Next
Prev

Wildfire Expert Warns of ‘Nightmare Scenario’ as High Level, Alberta, Bushe River Dene Evacuate

May 20, 2019
Reading time: 3 minutes

skeeze/Pixabay

skeeze/Pixabay

7
SHARES
 

About 4,000 people in and around High Level, Alberta are under an evacuation order as the 60,000-hectare Chuckegg Creek wildfire, one of six burning out of control across the province, approaches from the southwest.

To the southeast, the Dene Tha’ First Nation issued a similar order for the community of Bushe River, CBC reports.

“By afternoon, it became a very scary sky,” longtime local resident Deb Stecyk said a couple of days before the order. “It actually looked like a thunderstorm was rolling in, but it was all smoke. It was kind of like a fire cloud.”

“It almost looked like the fire was just on the outskirts of High Level. It was kind of frightening,” she added. “Given what happened in Fort McMurray and Slave Lake…it makes everybody really nervous.”

While Stecyk said people in town couldn’t smell the smoke over the weekend, online reports from Yellowknife indicated fumes had drifted as far as the Northwest Territories.

But on “Monday at 3:12 p.m. MDT, the Chuckegg Fire was about four miles southwest of High Level,” Wildfire Today reported yesterday. “Moderate or strong winds are expected to push the head of the fire toward the northwest this week, but spread on the flanks will most likely cause it to move closer to the town at the same time. By the weekend, the forecast calls for winds out of the west that would seriously increase the threat to the town unless the 64 firefighters assigned on the 170,000-acre fire can perform heroic measures to stop the fire in that area.”

And as the fire “burns close to or into the town while pushed by a strong wind, it could be a repeat of the nightmare scenario we saw last November in Paradise, California when the Camp Fire spread from house to house,” the U.S. specialist publication warns. “In some neighbourhoods in Paradise last fall, the homes were about 18 to 20 feet apart, according to the measurements we took using Google Earth. In High Level, the separation distance is about half that — in some areas the homes are about 10 feet apart.”

With burning embers capable of travelling up to a quarter-mile, and radiant heat high enough to ignite homes on both sides of a burning structure, “you can have a self-powered conflagration spreading house to house through a city. When the structures are that close together, the homeowners have not reduced the fuel in the Home Ignition Zone, and the home itself is not built to FireWise standards, a massive disaster can be the result.”

Days ago, Alberta Wildfire information officer Derek Gagnon told CBC the fire started near Alberta Highway 35 on May 12 and is moving northwest. The road is closed south of High Level.

“It’s pushing away from the highway, and it’s also not burning towards the town of High Level,” he said. “So while people are seeing a lot of smoke and there are some highways in the area that have been closed due to that wildfire, we are not expecting it to go towards the town of High Level.”

Still, he told Global News Monday, “we’ve been monitoring that fire very closely because of its proximity to people,” and “we do encourage residents to be vigilant about that and to make sure that they’re prepared for any situation.”

Gagnon noted Sunday that fire bans and off-road vehicle restrictions are in place across most of northern Alberta. The province has seen 409 wildfires since March 1, about 70% of them directly related to human activity.

“We have extreme wildfire conditions in northern Alberta right now, and it’s really easy for any little spark to become a big fire,” he said. “With the help of Albertans we can ensure that the forests and the people of Alberta stay safe.” Wildfire Today has details of the response to the fire, with 64 firefighters, heavy equipment, and helicopters and air tankers on the job and requests out for more support.



in Canada, Drought, Famine & Wildfires, First Peoples, Health & Safety, Sub-National Governments

The latest climate news and analysis, direct to your inbox

Subscribe

Related Posts

TGEGASENGINEERING/Wikimedia Commons
Energy Politics

EXCLUSIVE: Hydrogen is Up, Pieridae is Out as German Chancellor Preps for Canada Visit

August 15, 2022
748
Steve Jurvetson/flickr
International Security & War

The Other Kind of Climate Change: Even a ‘Limited’ Nuclear War Would Trigger Starvation, Kill Billions

August 15, 2022
2
/Pikist
United States

Historic Climate Bill Passes U.S. House, Goes to Biden for Signature

August 15, 2022
221

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

I agree to the Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy.

Trending Stories

TGEGASENGINEERING/Wikimedia Commons

EXCLUSIVE: Hydrogen is Up, Pieridae is Out as German Chancellor Preps for Canada Visit

August 15, 2022
748
Brocken Inaglory/wikimedia commons

State-Wide Megastorm Driven by Global Heating Could Drench California for a Month

August 15, 2022
437
/Pikist

Historic Climate Bill Passes U.S. House, Goes to Biden for Signature

August 15, 2022
221
Vinaykumar8687/WikimediaCommons

Solar On Track for ‘Staggering’ 30% Growth This Year

August 15, 2022
157
UK Black Tech/wikimedia commons

U.S. Tech Workers Leaving High-Paying Jobs to Focus on Climate Crisis

August 15, 2022
122
United States Marine Core/Wikimedia Commons

Distributed Energy Gains Ground With Mobile Microgrids, Vehicle-to-Grid Technology

August 15, 2022
114

Recent Posts

Steve Jurvetson/flickr

The Other Kind of Climate Change: Even a ‘Limited’ Nuclear War Would Trigger Starvation, Kill Billions

August 15, 2022
2
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service

Arctic Warms 4 Times Faster than Global Average, Surpassing Estimates 

August 15, 2022
73
rawpixel

Common Medications Foil Body’s Ability to Cope with Hot Weather

August 15, 2022
92
Max Pixel

Slashing Nitrogen Dioxide Pollution Can Improve Crop Yields, Study Finds

August 15, 2022
50
David Hawgood/Geograph

E-Bikes a ‘Faster and Fairer’ Emissions Solution than Electric Cars

August 15, 2022
103
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Northeast Region/wikimedia commons

Researchers Study Carbon Loss, Forest Impacts of Northwest Territories ‘Zombie Fires’

August 15, 2022
23
Next Post
Pexels/Pixabay

Stop New Coal Plants by 2020, Cut Fossil Subsidies, UN Secretary General Urges

The Energy Mix

Copyright 2022 © Smarter Shift Inc. and Energy Mix Productions Inc. All rights reserved.

Navigate Site

  • About
  • Contact
  • Privacy Policy and Copyright
  • Cookie Policy

Follow Us

No Result
View All Result
  • Canada
  • UK & Europe
  • Fossil Fuels
  • Ending Emissions
  • Community Climate Finance
  • Clean Electricity Grid
  • Cities & Communities

Copyright 2022 © Smarter Shift Inc. and Energy Mix Productions Inc. All rights reserved.

Manage Cookie Consent
To provide the best experiences, we use technologies like cookies to store and/or access device information. Consenting to these technologies will allow us to process data such as browsing behaviour or unique IDs on this site. Not consenting or withdrawing consent, may adversely affect certain features and functions.
Functional Always active
The technical storage or access is strictly necessary for the legitimate purpose of enabling the use of a specific service explicitly requested by the subscriber or user, or for the sole purpose of carrying out the transmission of a communication over an electronic communications network.
Preferences
The technical storage or access is necessary for the legitimate purpose of storing preferences that are not requested by the subscriber or user.
Statistics
The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for statistical purposes. The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for anonymous statistical purposes. Without a subpoena, voluntary compliance on the part of your Internet Service Provider, or additional records from a third party, information stored or retrieved for this purpose alone cannot usually be used to identify you.
Marketing
The technical storage or access is required to create user profiles to send advertising, or to track the user on a website or across several websites for similar marketing purposes.
Manage options Manage services Manage vendors Read more about these purposes
View preferences
{title} {title} {title}