The Fort McMurray Fire on This Day in History

 

This Day in History:  Eighty-eight thousand people are evacuated from their homes in Fort McMurray, Alberta, Canada on this day in 2016 as a wildfire rips through the community, destroying approximately 2,400 homes and buildings. The fire spread across approximately 1,500,000 acres before it was declared to be under control on July 5, 2016. It continued to smolder, and was fully extinguished on August 2, 2017. It is suspected to have been caused by humans in a remote area 15 kilometers (9.3 mi) from Fort McMurray, but no official cause has been determined to date. With an estimated damage cost of $9.9 billion, it was the costliest disaster in Canadian history.

Local historians said the fire was reminiscent of the Great Fire of 1919. The Edmonton Bulletin, dated May 21, 1919, wrote: "Swept away in the maelstrom of a raging forest fire which descended upon the place like a furnace blast on Monday afternoon, the little village … is today a mere smoldering mass of ruin and desolation, and its entire population is homeless and bereft of all personal effects, save scant articles of clothing which could be worn through the nerve-wracking struggle the people were forced to make to preserve their lives. The absence of a death toll in the catastrophe is due to the heroic measures taken by the citizens, who rushed into the waters of the lake and defied suffocating heat and smoke by means of wet blankets. Only such measures saved many of the women and little children, the intensity of the fire being shown by the burning of the very reeds along the shore and surface of the lake."

The article was recounting the wildfire that burned over the village of Lac La Biche about 200 km (120 miles) northeast of Edmonton. "The parallels between the Great Fire and Fort McMurray fire are striking: dry conditions 'that desiccated the surrounding region and created a tinder-dry powder keg'; it was not one fire but a complex of many fires; the source of the fire is unknown...a group of 23 Cree were camping at Sekip Lake when the fire overran them in a matter of minutes. Eleven died, including a father who’s quick action saved his wife and children." Source