| From: LoneClone | 7/23/2024 2:12:38 PM | | | | | | And here we go.
Dry lightning sparked 80 new fires yesterday across BC, necessitating new evacuations, The most serious is just across the Alberta border in Jasper, at the north end of the Rocky Mountain Highway, where last night with no notice an evacuation order was announced after fires cut off the highways to the east and south. The town and park personnel are currently being evacuated by the southwest through BC on the only remaining road.
Alberta now has more than 130 fires burning, almost a third the number burning in BC. Air quality is suffering across western Canada, with smoke even reaching the coast where I am, making my eyes very sore.
Alas, though it is supposed to be cooler the next few days with perhaps, small amounts of desperately needed rain, but the heat is supposed to return by the end of the week.
LC |
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| To: johnlw who wrote (6886) | 7/23/2024 5:32:12 PM | | From: LoneClone | | | | It is definitely a bad situation. First winters that don't get cold enough anymore allow the beetle population to explode and spread, leaving huge swathes of dead trees, then drought and abnormally high summer temperatures prepare the dead vegetation for instant ignition. Just add lightning and wind...
At this time of year Jasper normally has more tourists than residents They are all lucky that the fires didn't cut off the only remaining escape route after the other two were closed by fire.
There is now starting to be serious discussion about switching the 'summer' tourist season in BC from July and August to April through June and September through October to avoid the risk of fire and smoke. In particular we get a lot of Europeans who come here, rent an RV, and spend a month or two touring the province. It sure takes the fun out of that if you are facing s constant risk of fire and smoke.
LC |
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| From: LoneClone | 7/24/2024 12:15:36 PM | | | | | | Another day, another hundred fire starts across BC...
There are currently 430 wildfires in BC, with about 60% classed as out of control, as well as 20 Evacuation Orders and 28 Evacuation Alerts.
More than 25k people have been evacuated from Jasper, just across the Alberta border, through BC. There has been a heroic effort across rural BC to help the fire refugees as they take stock and then make their way to their next destination.
Here's a measure of how dangerous conditions are right now -- it was only two hours from the time the most threatening of the fires sparked and the Evacuation Order being proclaimed. We talk about bomb cyclones; this was a bomb wildfire.
I got the name of the highway from Jasper to Banff through the spine of the Rockies wrong -- it is of course dubbed the Icefields Parkway. It is one of the great drives in the world, though it sure has changed since the first time I visited it over 50 years ago. Then the famed Columbia Icefields reached within a few hundred metres of the Parkway, but these days its toe is kilomtres further back from the road.
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| From: LoneClone | 7/25/2024 2:08:20 PM | | | | | | The fire is now inside Jasper, advancing at 6 metres per minute. A number of homes and buildings have burned, with the historic Jasper Lodge in jeopardy. Given the volatile conditions only a skeleton crew of firefighters were able to remain to try to protect structures
I mentioned recently that the historic mining town of Barkerville in the Cariboo is also threatened, and now another historic mining town, Silverton in SE BC, has had to be evacuated. This aspect of wildfires doesn't get talked about much, but the toll also includes a museum full of irreplaceable artifacts that was completely destroyed during the heat dome a few years ago when the town of Lytton burned tpo the ground.
There is a chance of rain coming, but it may be too little and too late to help much.
LC |
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