ABMax24
Active VIP Member
Sorry to take a side step on this thread for a moment. Looking for that video where the man is expressing his concerns to a group on stage about community members knowing of the fires before the group issued warnings. He was stating how the people had resources ready etc. but were not allowed to use them. Can anyone point me in the direction of the video. Looked around and couldn't find it again. Can't remember if it was from Fort Mac or from the Grand Prairie GPREP meeting? Thanks.
That was Grande Prairie. What all you outsiders don't understand is the situation at hand. Friday morning that fire was small and localized to an area near the Wapiti River, during the day we had wind gusts to 70km/h from the southeast and the fire moved Northwest along the river bank almost 5 kilometers in about 12 hours.
No intelligent individual was going to get in the way of that, or let some rookies with a water truck or a hoe that thought they could fight fire into the fires path. The first responders prioritized evacuation of the residents. They did ask for the publics assistance, and contractors with dozers and hoes with wildfire training were used to create firebreaks to contain the fire.
Due to the other wildfires in the province outside resources were not available and the fire was fought almost exclusively with local resources. In the end only 4 structures were lost to the fire, which is remarkable considering the speed of the fire and the sheer number of acreages in the area.