FOREST FIRE SMOKE

        There is much complaining about forest fire smoke coming from Canada to the US. Smoke is one thing that causes poor air quality. There  are many conditions humans have that are made worse with poor air quality. I sympathize with these people.

     However , this is a bit of a rant. It bothers me greatly when complaints are made that 

Canada isn't doing enough to control forest fires.  In particular , le plus grand orange's comments bother me.

     What is burning in Canada is the boreal forest The boreal forest stretches right across the whole country. There  are no breaks . Good luck in fighting fires in the boreal forest. However, we make a huge effort. Just think of the size of this forest. Why is the smoke worse now? Just think climate  change. When I was a child in the 40' s, we had far fewer fires. I rarely remember smoke.

     We have had smoke here but the  air quality has not been terrible. I do not look at air quality numbers

    There are forests in the US but they are fragmented. The growth is different and the plants do not burn as easily as in a boreal forest.

     The boreal forest burns very easily as  the needles are dry.

    When I  start a camp fire I use paper. Aboriginals use dead spruce branches with the red needles. They call it gas. It blazes up   very rapidly.

    

SMOKE

        Alberta , Canada , has had, and is having a very serious wildfire season.  

       Today, there are about 130 fires burning and about 30 of them out of control. 

      We've had hot dry windy weather which makes great conditions for the fires to burn and very hard to fight the fires. The wild fires are large and very fast moving. The fires are more intense than in previous years. 

     These fires have started earlier in the season than usual. The spring fire season is usually short if we have lots of winter snow and a wet spring. Then the vegetation leafs out and is hard to burn.

      The nearest fire is about 150 km from me. Many people have had to leave towns and farms.

      The area is mixed with heavy forest, ranching, farming and undeveloped poor land. It seems like the fire likes these areas and can rip through it very quickly. 

    We were not bothered with smoke until two days ago. The fire has been burning for three weeks but the smoke has moved  across Canada to Ontario and then south. My daughter, who lives in the Chicago area reports that they have smoke from the fires and that we have made the news there. 

     It seems that the government is very slow to bring in extra equipment and crews to fight the fire.

    All we can hope for is some substantial rain. 

A FEW THOUGHTS ON CLIMATE CHANGE

       This past year I think many people have begun to take climate change seriously. Things have happened that are making a big impact on our daily lives. 

      My neighbor province of British Columbia , Canada, has suffered this year. You know , the beautiful province with mountain scenery and forests.  This summer they had major forest fires for most of the summer. Homes and businesses were  lost. High temperature records were made. I live in the province to the west , Alberta, and we had heavy smoke for a good part of the summer. 

       This winter British Columbia has had torrential rain and major flooding. The major highway was washed out in many places. The two railroads were also damaged. 

      This is one place and it had some very obvious changes and they don't want any more. 

       Just this year we had a major conference on climate change. You know, the conferences that do nothing! Plans and promises are made but nothing happens to control warming. Most of these plans involve the big guys. Big business. Big industry. Big government. They all look after themselves to make it look like they are doing something when all the time they are creating more schemes to line their pockets. Carbon tax? Carbon trading? These are games to funnel money around.

     Individuals have to do their part. Maybe that will bring about change. One thing I would like to suggest is that we have rationing. Let's say rationing on gasoline. Rations that would influence enough so that people would have to drive less and drive smaller cars. At times my neighbor across the street has five vehicles. Two of them are large trucks. This guy drives to Tim Hortons to get a coffee. He makes a special trip to the store for smokes. If we had rationing this guy wouldn't be able to get gas to drive those vehicles. 

    So it's just an idea I throw out . We have to get on climate change sooner than later. 

Fort McMurray Again

      Have you heard anything about Fort McMurray lately?

      Not likely!

      The media is around when they can get sensational pictures of billowing clouds of smoke and flames licking through the trees. Well, there are no big fires so the media has gone on in search of some other sensational story.

       But Fort McMurray is still there and it's still a serious story.

       A few days ago the wind changed and the temperature dropped so the fire died down and travelled away for mcMurray. There are still hot spots which can become very dangerous again.

      So people are going back home? Not so fast. There's lots that has to be done before 90000 people go tearing home. Infrastructure has to be checked to see if it's working. So checks on electricity, gas, water , sewer and other services have to be made. Basic stock in all businesses has to be filled. There's no gas in the whole city.A grand plan has to be made before people can return home. It's not going to happen anytime soon.

     Today adults were issued debit cards for $1250 each and $500 for each child. The Red Cross is issuing $500 per person. The Red Cross has raised $67 000 000.  After  seven days some basics have to be purchased like clothing.

     People will be going back but not right away. Their kids are being enrolled in schools. 11000 kids were enrolled in Ft McMurray schools when they evacuated. Many of those kids will remain in their new schools until the end of the year.

     Now 85 - 90% of the city was saved. Over 2000 buildings were destroyed. That puts many people in a difficult situation. Those who lost houses will have some difficult decisions to make. I think in the short term temporary housing will be brought in and construction camps will be used.

    So there's no hot news but the real tough story is still there and will go on for years. Estimates of three years for rebuilding are being suggested. Estimated damage is nine billion dollars.



This is a photo from CBC

Fort McMurray Fire

       By now most people would be aware of the dangerous destructive forest fire at Ft McMurray. Wildfires were in the area but on the weekend one fire suddenly went very wild. Windy hot conditions allowed the fire to go toward the city of Ft. McMurray. By Monday a mandatory evacuation of the city was ordered. The evacuation order was almost too late.

       Ft McMurray has a population of about 90000. There is about 1 1/4 roads out of McMurray. There's one divided double lane highway and a much smaller two lane highway . Since almost all people ended up on the highway , a massive traffic jam took place. Adding to the misery, there was no gas left in McMurray so people started with less than a tank of gas. It's a long way to another town with gas so people were stalled on the road with no gas.

    About 15000 people went to the north to empty work camps. 65000 went south toward Edmonton.
Now it's hard to imagine that many people on one road trying to get away. Once they were a few Km out of town they were out of fire danger but there was no place to stay.

    Ft. Mcmurray is 587 km northeast of where I live.

    You probably connect Ft McMurray to the massive tar sands oil development. The large mines and plants are in no danger as the mines have cleared all the forest. The city is located in a beautiful boreal forest area.

     So an emergency situation has made it very worrisome for us even if we are far from danger. My neighbor works at McMurray. He came home safely but it was a difficult trip.

     Now about 50 years ago there was no road to McMurray. It was a small isolated village. There was a railway to McMurray.

   At this time the fire is still out of control.

Heavy Wildfire Smoke at Red Deer

       Yesterday a tremendous amount of smoke came in on a weather system from the forest fires which have been burning in British Columbia all summer. These fires are at least 500 miles away from us and across the Rockie mountains.
   
      The smoke was quite noticeable at 7:00AM. By afternoon smoke was obvious within 100 meters. It looked like every home owner had a bon fire in the back yard. The smoke was blue and very easily to smell. Visibility was down to about 1km and the sky was completely obliterated by the smoke. Needless to say our day was extremely dull. Night came early. When we saw the sun it was an orange red. Too bad I didn't take any pictures yesterday.

     Later in the evening we had thunderstorms which continued until about 3:00AM.

     Today there was much less smoke and the day was much brighter. However we did not see any blue sky. This condition is supposed to last until the 21 st . One wonders at the huge amounts of material burned to produce such a tremendous amount of smoke.