More rain expected as fire crews continue battling Fort Mac wildfire
224 firefighters and 22 helicopters part of efforts to protect area Friday
FORT MCMURRAY At the old airport terminal south of Fort McMurray, helicopters raced between the airport and the fire on Friday, carrying around eight wildland firefighters at a time.
Gavin Hojka, an incident commander with Alberta Wildfire, said there is no road access where they're going and it would take a day for the crews to hike through the Boreal Forest to reach the wildfire.
They still have to hike to the wildfire when they're dropped off, and carry chainsaws, generators, pumps, axes, shovels, food and “thousands and thousands of feet of hoses.”
Shifts at the fire line last 14 to 16 hours. Hojka said it's hard, gruelling work. He monitors their progress and safety from a command post, which is run out of mobile trailers. He's fed a constant stream of data from radar, satellites, and radio reports from firefighters on the ground and helicopter pilots.
On Friday, 224 firefighters and 22 helicopters were assigned to battle the wildfire southwest of Fort McMurray. The size of the wildfire, which is identified as MWF-017, was revised on Friday to 19,582 hectares in size, down from 19,820 on Thursday, thanks to a more accurate survey of the area after smoke has cleared.
The closest point of the fire remained 5.5 km from the Fort McMurray landfill and 4.5 kilometres from the intersection of highways 63 and 881. Rains on Thursday and Friday dropped the fire risk in the area, but a ban remains on campfires and off-highway vehicles.
“More rain showers are in the forecast,” said Alberta Wildfire spokesperson Josee St- Onge on Friday.
On the edges of Fort McMurray's Grayling Terrace subdivision, the Hangingstone River feeds a network of large sprinklers drenching the forest with water. Depending on the water source, they can shoot between 75 and 150 gallons of water per minute. Nearly five km of water lines linking sprinklers are scattered across Fort McMurray's southern edges.
Jody Butz, the regional fire chief and emergency management director, couldn't help but notice the irony of relying on the Hangingstone River to protect the neighbourhood.
“In a flood season, this is a concern. But during a fire, it's a benefit,” he said during a Thursday media tour. “We'll take the good with the bad.”
Most of the 2,579 homes destroyed in the 2016 Horse River Wildfire were in the city's Abasand and Beacon Hill subdivisions. People won't return this time to find an ashen moonscape of debris, but they will find trees soaked red.
A red-orange layer of fire retardant, about 30 metres thick in some parts, coats about 4.5 kilometres of forest.
Butz says the 168,000 litres of fire retardant are a harmless fertilizer. The phosphate-based fertilizer feels like a thin paint until it hardens, and will wash away after about a month.
There are 36 firefighters in Fort McMurray maintaining the water lines and deploying fire retardant. In Grayling Terrace, there were trucks from the fire departments of Hinton, Lac La Biche and Red Earth Creek parked next to vehicles from the Fort McMurray Fire Department. There are also 40 police officers dedicated to watching over the evacuated neighbourhoods.
“When you return home, your neighbourhoods will remain the same,” said Butz.
“Yesterday, RCMP special tactical operations visited every evacuated neighbourhood to document conditions of each home, and no damages were observed or reported.”