Large wildfire burning Fort McMurray, Alberta, Canada, whole city on evacuation

[BlueFox]

I know it's a few days old now, but the situation is still getting worse as the whole city burns up and people leave their homes..











So far, over 80,000 people (nearly 90,000) have had to flee their homes.

Officials say that since the area is so dry and the winds are so strong, they can only depend on weather now to help fight the blaze.

It is also said that climate change is said to be a factor in this disaster.

The fire is now over 200,000 hectares in size (2,000 square kilometers) Which is about the size of the country of Mauritius, and is still largely out of control..

[Fuzzy]

Who upset the devil...? Perkele.

[Everett]

If that happened in my city I would probably die since I'm impervious to alarms.

[Ramo_Hawk]

If that happened to Malta, which is about 36km long, I'm pretty sure we'd all be dead or we're all in the middle of the sea by now.

[BlueFox]

The fire is now over 200,000 hectares in size (2,000 square kilometers) Which is about the size of the country of Mauritius, and is still largely out of control..

[Mikal]

Why don't they just embark on some mass tree cutting? Create huge gaps between burning areas and currently not burning areas?

Maybe that'd be too huge of a job though...

[BlueFox]

Why don't they just embark on some mass tree cutting? Create huge gaps between burning areas and currently not burning areas?

Maybe that'd be too huge of a job though...

A common practice in fighting wildfires is to create a controlled burn perimeter, which burns off any vegetation and would not allow the fire to spread.. But, that only works for certain conditions.. (Smaller fires, no winds, and good condition of the vegetation.)

-The area is in the prairies, which strong winds are common and could carry hot burning embers for a large distance, which is what caused the fire to get so large in the first place. It jumped a river and a major highway..

-Northern Alberta and British Columbia saw a very, short, dry winter this year, causing the vegetation to be as dry as it is right now, allowing the fire to take off easily, a controlled burn would easily get out of control and make the situation much, much worse.

And tree cutting would still leave much vegetation behind which would spread even faster without trees to block the wind, plus it's a lot of work, expensive, and very dangerous in dry conditions.. (Resting a hot chainsaw on the ground has started fires before) Plus, it isn't trees that cause a fire to go out of control, it's the dead vegetation on the forest floor.