2024 Wildfire Season

[FSTO]

RCAF are ready for another role?

https://twitter.com/x/status/1816538816481755275

 

[Haggis]

But you lose four fisherman for a few days...

'Nothing short of a miracle': Missing N.L. fishing crew arrives home safely​

Fishing boat lost contact Wednesday evening​

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/newfoundland-labrador/navigator-found-safe-1.7270309

"The Perfect Storm" starring George Clooney has been running on cable channels quite a bit over the last few days.

So has "Zero Dark Thirty" for that matter. Something we don't know yet????

 

[childs56]

Four pages discussing the fires in BC, the evacuation of 25K people from the Jasper wildfire, but no mention of the 10K impacted by the wildfire in Labrador City.

• CBC News (2024, July 20)
• Canadian Red Cross (n.d.)

How many people visit Labrador City compared to how many visited Jasper National Park?

 

[Colin Parkinson]

I would not want to be any senior management in Parks Canada visiting Jasper or the area for the next couple of years.

 

[RangerRay]

Many planned prescribed burns were kiboshed because of pressure from NIMBYs. Some locals and businesses didn’t want their mountain views smoked out.

 

[MilEME09]

Many planned prescribed burns were kiboshed because of pressure from NIMBYs. Some locals and businesses didn’t want their mountain views smoked out.

and thats politics at play, from reading their website it sounds like Parks Canada had more a mitigation role then an actual fighting roll except for municipal fire departments which had wildfire crews, anything more and they asked AB for help. Problem is as you mention, if locals don't let them do whats needed it can be an issue. It should be noted that parks Canada did build a rather substantial fire break around the town were being built this spring

Fire protection and restoration projects

parks.canada.ca

 

[The Bread Guy]

Part of the problem is not starting the fires....but keeping the fire contained where you want it be.

Ambition is good in everything but over achieving in Prescribed Fire Ignition shuts programs down. We're going to need a bunch of beer if we start going down the prescribed burn rabbit hole.

And likewise we can use at least one more round going through the merits/cost/differences of fires vs. managed forests and infrastructure/impact/local vs. landscape views.

But for a different look...here's Jasper Valley in 1915:
https://explore.mountainlegacy.ca/stations/show/2732

That area burnt last night.

For reference some of the Drought Code values (think of large log heavy fuels and/or deeper submuskeg) was over a value of 700 in part of the Jasper Valley. That is a multi-year, drought level value I had to read a couple of times as a value of 300 is a Very High rating and 425 is Extreme. Canadian Wildland Fire Information System | Fire Weather Maps

Last update they provided in the afternoon indicated that winds last night were 100km/hr.

I owe a few structural firefighters some beer for hanging around under those conditions.

Thanks for your bit of the REST of the story - take care of yourself as much as you can in these crazy times