FORT McMURRAY
All the fire bosses knew what that meant. Such windy fronts often caused extreme and rapid change in fire behaviour.
Far north of Fort McMurray, Fire 9 reached the south bank of the Athabasca River just before sunset on May 2. As darkness set in, the blaze continued.
Sunrise on Tuesday, May 3, brought more bad news. From a helicopter, Schroeder saw that fire had spread dramatically overnight, far more than he had thought likely. It had again doubled in size. Worse, 15 km north of the city, fire embers had unexpectedly jumped 600 metres over the waters and shoreline of the Athabasca and started a handful of fires on the north bank. If those spot fires spread, they had a clear path to Fort McMurray’s northern suburbs, home to most of the population.
At 7 a.m., Schmitte called Fort McMurray fire chief Darby Allen with news of the fire jumping the river. At that moment, knowing the treacherous fire conditions, Allen started to mull the possibility of evacuating the city.
The fire slept under a shroud of dark smoke through Tuesday morning. In the city, no ominous columns of smoke could be seen over Fire 9 and there was little smoke polluting the air. It seemed like a beautiful, hot midsummer morning.
An inversion had settled over the fire. Cool air above held down the smoke. By late morning, however, the inversion broke. Warm air rose. The fire woke up. Multiple fire fronts ignited north and south of the Athabasca.
At Tuesday’s 11 a.m. fire update for reporters, Allen warned Fort McMurray residents not to get a false sense of security. The forecast high for the day was near 30 C, with 15 km/h winds expected from the southwest. “Fire conditions are extreme,” he said. “The fire is able to get into areas where we can’t stop it.”
Allen warned people to have a plan in mind in case they had to leave suddenly. “We’re a long ways off from that, but that’s something to bear in mind.”
The provincial fire bosses wanted to attack the north bank fires while they were still small. Kent Jennings, 30, led a heli-attack team dispatched to do the job. Like his twin brother Scott, he’d been fighting Alberta fires for more than a decade.
He scouted the blaze from a helicopter around 9 a.m. He was surprised the fire had been able to jump the river overnight.
This is going to be tougher than I thought, he thought. But maybe if the winds are favourable and we can get a dozer guard cut fast, we can get lucky and hold the blaze.
At the province’s warehouse at the Fort McMurray airport, Jennings gathered his team. But when they arrived in the late morning at the north bank fire, thick black smoke covered everything. There was no way to gauge the extent of the fire, let alone find a safe place to land.
The crew reluctantly returned to base. It was quickly reassigned to help on Fire 9’s threatening tip west of Gregoire, a neighbourhood on the city’s south end.
Jennings and his team were to set up bladders in the bush, large vats for collecting water, either by hoses from creeks or having helicopters bucket in water. The bladders would then feed the hoses of firefighters trying to douse hot spots.
Just as Jennings landed in the bush, winds picked up from the southwest and the temperature rose. The fire spread from the forest floor to the tree tops. But now instead of expanding on a narrow band at the tip, the wind rolled it over along its six-kilometre northwestern edge.
A massive wall of dark smoke and crown of flame charged toward Fort McMurray’s southwest suburbs, Abasand and Beacon Hill.
Embers flew high over Jennings and his crew and ignited spot fires over the dozer guard line. Each spruce tree that exploded into flame roared like a train. The forest soon howled like 500 steam engines.
Some new crew members grew fearful. Jennings could understand why. It did seem scary. And even though there were many people around him, as the team leader he felt suddenly alone. He was responsible for all, but not part of any group. What good could he do? He was immensely frustrated. He had wanted to dig in against Fire 9, but there was nowhere to make a stand.
Jennings could see looks of anxiety and doubt in the faces of his firefighters. Yes, most of them had seen fires get away before, but those fires were in the middle of nowhere. The stakes were so much higher here.
And now it was time to leave. Group after group, the firefighters were choppered to the safety of their airport base.
Firefighting could be enjoyable, Jennings had always thought. Tackling a new blaze, beating it back. But this constant retreat and defeat was not fun. This was devastating. He wondered if he would wake up from this bad dream.