What are your thoughts on the Fort McMurray wildfire?
A routine forest fire, the wind shifts, and suddenly terrified inhabitants are fleeing through apocalyptic walls of flame, pillars of smoke and flying cinders. What will it take to recover? What are your thoughts? With guest host, Duncan McCue.
MORE FROM THIS EPISODE
A routine forest fire, the wind shifts, and suddenly terrified inhabitants are fleeing through apocalyptic walls of flame, pillars of smoke and flying cinders.
It's a miracle that so many got out of Fort McMurray alive. Close to 90,000 people were evacuated from the area when a wildfire on the edge of the city suddenly shifted direction and jumped across the Athabasca River.
The speed, the ferocity and the unpredictability of the fire caught even the experts by surprise. And many of us watched helplessly from a distance as it played out on screens across the country.
Following the fire and evacuation of Fort McMurray what are your thoughts? And what is it going to take for Fort Mac to recover?
Guests
Mike Allen is a resident of Fort McMurray, and a former Alberta MLA for Fort McMurray-Wood Buffalo.
Colleen Malone is a senior humanitarian advisor with Save the Children.
Robert Gray is a fire ecologist with R.W. Gray Consulting Ltd. He is based in Chilliwack, British Columbia.
Paul Kovacs is founder and executive director of the Institute for Catastrophic Loss Reduction at Western University.
Links & Articles
CBC.ca
- Fort McMurray wildfire burning so hot, only weather can stop it
- Fort McMurray wildfire evacuee's video captures his harrowing escape
- Evacuees find food, comfort on the road from Fort McMurray
- 'Of course' Fort McMurray fire linked to climate change, Elizabeth May says
- Fort McMurray fire could cost insurers $9B, BMO predicts
- Fort McMurray fire disaster 'wakeup call' for dry communities west of Calgary
Macleans
Toronto Star
National Post
- Experts warned four years ago that Alberta's aging forests bring risk of 'catastrophic fires'
- Colby Cosh: In a redoubt north of Fort McMurray, a city's people await a battle
- Economic fallout of Fort McMurray wildfire could be big, if history is any guide
Globe and Mail
- Fort McMurray fire spreads to 85,000 hectares; thousands stranded to be airlifted
- 'Fort McMurray will rebuild': Amid destruction, residents look to future
- Dramatic rise in forest fires projected for Canada's West due to warming
- A perfect storm of conditions: Here's how the blaze reached Fort McMurray, and why it spread so fast