Fires in Northern Alberta.

[Tiberius]

The town of Slave Lake, where I spent a few years of my youth living near, has been annihilated according to the most recent radio reports from the town of High Prairie in the time of a day. Really not sure what to say... so here is the story.

edmonton.ctv.ca/servlet/an/local/CTVNews/20110515/edm_slavelake_110515/20110515/?hub=EdmontonHome

www.globaltvedmonton.com/Fire+forces+evacuation+Slave+Lake+surrounding+communities/4787629/story.html

It was a city of 7000 that was a hub for all the communities for, like, 100 kilometers. Had the only Wal Mart, a Canadian Tire, a really good Sobeys (the only place one could get salt pork and hard bread outside of Newfoundland). One half of my family lives about 75 kilometers west of the town, and I have a few relatives on my father's side that live in Slave Lake itself.

[Mlle Antéchrist]

Holy shit. I've been hearing about the fires, but I didn't realize it was this bad. If 30% has already been consumed, I can only imagine how bad it's going to get.

[happycheeze]

wow thats fucked up. Hope your relatives are still okay.

[tiado]

I've been following updates to the situation in Slave Lake. It's messed up how a town has virtually been wiped off the map by the fires. I'm glad the people of the town have been evacuated and are now safe.

[MaybeNever]

Wow. That kind of reminds me of Centralia, Pennsylvania, which only has like 8 people living it despite having a population of more than 5000 about thirty years ago. The cause? Underground coal fire.

I'm not sure how to feel about people being arrested if they refuse to evacuate. This is definitely an emergency situation, but... I don't know. Hope your relatives are safe, Tibbles.

[Mlle Antéchrist]

My great aunt used to live up in Slave Lake when I was little. Part of the reason she moved was the fire risk. It's been years since I last visited the town, but I remember that it was a really nice community.

There's a fairly good write-up of the situation here: www.google.com/hostednews/canadianpress/article/ALeqM5hEuIZ_rbWPI8F6qH-Ubx0Kyh1x_g?docId=6863150

Thankfully, it sounds like there weren't any deaths or serious injuries.

Notable excerpts:

"We're homeless. We have no town. We have NO town," Coreen Attilon said from an evacuation centre in Edmonton, 250 kilometres southeast of Slave Lake.

Attilon said she wondered about her friends and her mobile home, which was in the hard-hit neighbourhood of southeast Slave Lake.

"I got a text (message) this morning saying the whole thing is gone," said Attilon, who said she got out in her van with her friend Pete Prosser, her dog Max, some family photos, a gym bag and a knapsack.

She said the night was a literal trial by fire, even for a town that has learned to live with the annual threat from floods and fires.

She said she knew danger was coming when the skies filled with smoke and the winds whipped up to reach the roar of a freight train.

"We're going," she remembers telling Prosser. "Let's go."

They hopped in the van and joined a gridlock of cars trying to escape. Like mice in a maze, they drove down one road only to get turned around and forced back into town. Then down another road.

"It was black smoke. Just black. The whole sky was black."

They could see fire raging on both sides of the highway, the heat radiating through the windows. Ash was raining down. They came to one last road.

"I saw a firefighter with an open gate. We go up to him and I said, 'Buddy, is the road to Edmonton open?' and he said 'Yeah.'"

Behind them, they could see other cars lined up and jammed in a parking lot.

"That was the worst feeling. Looking back and seeing everybody in that parking lot with fire all around. Like surrounded. Totally, absolutely surrounded."

Video taken by someone who was evacuated from the town:



I can't imagine how scary it must to have been to actually be in that.

[Chi Shiro]

*hugs* I'm so sorry to hear about this, Tibbles.

[Meshakhad]

*hugs*

Even if nobody was seriously injured, losing a place you lived has to be hard.

[TWoozl]

Kinda makes me glad I ran like doom from Alberta as soon as I was able to. Nearly a decade in Vancouver, haven't looked back since. Then again, sooner or later you get to point and laugh at me, Tiberius; I hear Vancouver's supposedly going to suffer badly if the San Andreas ever has another large slip, through a sympathetic trigger. Sympathies, though... Slave Lake was basically the hub of that end of Alberta. Reminiscent of the Salmon Arm fires out here in BC, in 2003.

[anti-nonsense]

I remember those fires in Salmon Arm.

I have cousins in Alberta, but they are in an Edmonton suburb, so no worries there. And I haven't seen them or spoken to them in years.

[Mlle Antéchrist]

I remember the Salmon Arm fires. Also, last year (or the year before -- can't remember which), the forest fires out in BC were so bad that we actually had an air quality advisory here in Calgary, due to the haze of smoke drifting its way out here -- I remember waking up to the smell of smoke in the neighbourhood one morning, and thinking that there was a house fire or something, until I turned on the news and found out that it was actually coming in all the way from BC.