Wildfires burn one year after Slave Lake disaster
Posted May 14, 2012 10:06 am.
This article is more than 5 years old.
The warm, dry weather is not helping crews battling wildfires burning in northern Alberta.
Extra manpower is being called in to fight a fire about 15 kilometres north of Bonnyville; crews are attacking a 300-hectare blaze east of Athabasca, and the community of Lodgepole is on evacuation alert.
It’s all too familiar for the people of Slave Lake, who mark the one-year anniversary of the fire that tore through their town reducing one-third of it to rubble.
A year ago Tuesday, 732 residents were left homeless from the fire that roared through the town, destroying almost 400 homes and buildings.
The devastation happened quickly.
The fire started 15 kilometres east of town around 1:30 p.m. on May 14, 2011 and within hours grew to 500 hectares in size.
At 2:00 p.m. the following day, town officials remained hopeful Slave Lake would be bypassed; but a change in the winds, gusting to up to 100 kilometres per hour, pushed the fire into town.
By 9:30 p.m. a level four emergency – the highest on its scale – was called and more than 7,000 people fled.
Some were never able to return.
Currently, 54 wildfires are burning across Alberta with extreme fire hazards in the North- Central part of the province.
In Calgary and southern Alberta, hazards have increased from low to very-high in a matter of days because of the dry, hot weather in the forecast.
