After a day of caution over two encroaching wildfires, the winds picked up and brought chaos and destruction to Slave Lake.
Wind gusts that accelerated the advance of fires and grounded water bombers Sunday afternoon allowed the fire to jump two highways. Afterwards, it was free to tear through the Alberta town of 7,000 people. A long list of hundreds of buildings have burned down – including city hall, the police station, the radio station and countless houses – and the town has brought in a mandatory evacuation. The fires appear out of control.
Meanwhile, flames still block all but one road out of town, trapping many residents in the town and leaving officials to, at first, urge people to simply flee to wide open parking lots or beaches, and hope the fire doesn’t reach them. Now, they’re being told to get out. Traffic along the one highway was slow, as residents navigated through thick smoke amid waning daylight Sunday evening.
The town was also in the middle of a communications meltdown. Cell phone service was spotty at best, the power kept going out, and the local radio station, which had been broadcasting emergency updates, lost its signal to a power outage long before it burned down.
“I tell you the situation there is critical. It’s very critical. We’re doing everything we can,” said Mel Knight, Alberta’s Minister of Sustainable Resource Development, who oversees forest fire response.
There were no reports of injury, but information was slow to be released Sunday evening. Town officials had communicated largely through the community’s website, but it stopped updating after the town hall burned down.
“Fire has breached the town of Slave Lake boundary along the southern portion. Please move towards large green areas, beaches or large parking lots like Walmart, Canadian Tire, or the Sawridge Mall parking lot,” an earlier notice posted on Sunday evening said.
“We are landlocked at the moment,” Slave Lake Mayor Karina Pillay-Kinnee said in a text message earlier in the evening.
Thousands of evacuees headed to nearby communities – many also under a fire threat, though a lesser one - to stay with family.
“The winds just keep fanning it hotter and hotter and hotter, and the wind’s not slowing down,” said Mandy Jeworski, 27, who fled her home west of Slave Lake Sunday afternoon. “I’m scared for the people that are in Slave Lake right now.”
About 200 firefighters are in the town, but they’re handcuffed by circumstance – much of the heavy equipment crews use to fight forest fires is ineffective in an urban setting, and the winds are gusting up to 100 km/h, too strong for water bomber airplanes. The town put in place a water ban to try to maximize fire crews’ local water supply.
Local residents were expressing frustration online that officials didn’t try to evacuate sooner. Officials say it was just a matter of the winds changing.
“We kind of thought the thing was getting under control. We thought we had a good start on getting a handle on that particular fire. What happened this afternoon is the winds picked up,” Mr. Knight said, adding: “The best efforts we could put forward with the aircraft grounded just wasn’t enough to maintain a fire guard.”
Slave Lake, a town of about 7,000 located 250 kilometres north of Edmonton, was the epicentre of a sudden spate of forest fires that erupted across the province over the weekend. The high winds spread the flames quickly, leaving officials little time for preparation.
“It’s bad,” RCMP spokeswoman Doris Stapleton said. “There’s no loss of life. There is significant loss of property. The high winds and dry nature have made things critical.”
More than three dozen fires were out of control provincewide. The effects were wide-ranging – thousands of people in several small communities scattered across the north of the province were ordered evacuated and states of emergency were declared. Cleanup at a major oil spill was put on hold due.
“It’s changing by the minute. The wind is so strong, it’s chasing the fire in all kinds of directions,” Valerie Tradewell, a councillor in Slave Lake, said earlier in the day.
Alberta already had 1,000 firefighters on watch throughout the central part of the province, but they were outmatched. The province has asked for help from across Canada. Another 200 firefighters will arrive as soon as Monday, with more on the way, Mr. Knight said. “Our crews are fighting not only fires, but weather.”
The province was forced to prioritize – throwing resources at Slave Lake while letting other out-of-control fires burn until they pose an imminent threat to people.
“Human life and communities are number one. Our focus right now is those Slave Lake communities,” said Rob Harris, a spokesman for provincial fire crews.
The most notable example of the tradeoff could be found a little over two hours northwest of Slave Lake, where several small first nations communities were evacuated and where work at the site of an oil spill, which occurred when a Plains Midstream Canada pipeline broke on April 28, was put on hold on Sunday amid the fire threat.
Crews won’t return until the fires are under control, Plains Midstream said. It will also likely push back the restart of the pipeline, which requires the approval of provincial regulators, who have also been evacuated from the site.
The fire threat also forced Plains Midstream to shut down another section of its pipeline, carrying oil through the Slave Lake area and on to Edmonton.
Neither the oil slick nor the surrounding communities were under imminent threat Sunday evening, but officials weren’t taking chances. Late in the day, evacuations were issued for a handful of other tiny communities, including Red Earth Creek.
“With fires breaking out as they are, that area would be trapped if they didn’t get out now,” said Carolyn Kolebaba, reeve of the local Northern Sunrise County.
The weather, meanwhile, won’t likely get any better on Monday. Environment Canada is forecasting warm sunny skies and winds gusting to up to 70 km/h. Rain, however, is forecast for Tuesday.
“The challenge right now is we’re expecting increased winds and the temperature is expected to increase,” Ms. Pillay-Kinnee, the mayor, said earlier on Sunday. “It’s incredible how quickly things can change.”
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