Firefighters had an 870-acre wildfire burning south of Wickenburg, Arizona about 60 percent contained today; the Cloud Fire near Vulture Mine and Whispering Ranch roads started Thursday, according to the BLM.
State Forestry was responding with aircraft, engines, and hand crews. KJZZ reported that 75 firefighters from the BLM, Wickenburg, and Buckeye Valley were also working the fire.
12NEWS had video. Forestry officials said airtankers slowed the progress of the fire, which was burning in short, dense grass.
The fire started Thursday about 16 miles from Wickenburg.
The Alaska Division of Forestry and Fire Protection (DOF) has sent resources to the Canadian province of Alberta, where agency information officer Lily Coyle says they’re dealing with an unusually intense early wildfire season.
“They declared a state of emergency over this past weekend,” Coyle told Alaska Public Media (PBS). “On Saturday they had over 100 wildfires spreading out of control. Their Premier Danielle Smith deemed it an unprecedented crisis.”
Aerial Fire Magazine reported that at least 29,000 Albertans have been forced from their homes in the north and central regions of the province. Fire managers in Alberta have made large resource requests for outside assistance, including the airtanker and hotshot crew from Alaska. The strong intergovernmental agreement known as the Northwest Compact allows Alaska and other states and provinces to request or share resurces internationally.
Considering Alaska’s delayed snowmelt, late spring, and recent widespread moisture, the DOF made available Airtanker 544 — a Conair Dash 8 – 400
AT Airtanker — and the Pioneer Peak Hotshots, both based in Palmer. Tanker 544 departed for Alberta on May 9. Pioneer Peak IHC has extensive experience in managing fires, and the crew has completed their required 80 hours of pre-season training. The 23-person crew left Tuesday, May 9 in a smokejumper aircraft.
“Alberta was a significant contributor to the Alaska response effort last season,” said DOF Chief of Fire and Aviation Norm McDonald. “Supporting their efforts this spring is an excellent example of not only national but the international cooperation it takes to manage fires during extreme conditions. As we are just beginning the Alaska fire season with our late breakup, we will continue to monitor fire behavior and our own fire protection needs.”
Pioneer Peak Hotshot Crew after completing their annual 80-hour spring training in front of Pioneer Peak in Palmer, Alaska. Photo courtesy of Pioneer Peak Hotshots
Coyle said Alaska fire agencies often send resources outside the state in the fall, but she said the spring deployment is very unusual. “This is the first time we’ve sent a crew to Canada in May,” she said. “Our late fire season, coupled with the early drought conditions that Alberta is facing — that just set us up for this pretty unprecedented situation.”
On the federal side, Alaska Fire Service public affairs specialist Beth Ipsen said no resources have yet been sent to Alberta, but the agency has two hotshot crews that will be finishing training this week and may be available for deployment.
Nearly 30,000 people have been asked to evacuate their homes under siege of dozens of wildfires across the western Canadian province; officials declared a state of emergency on Saturday with more than 110 active wildfires, according to a report today by the BBC.
More than 50 schools were closed on Monday morning, affecting over
2023 Alberta fires
10,000 students, said Mike Ellis, Alberta’s minister of public safety and emergency services. Some areas had evacuation orders lifted after scattered showers and light winds tempered the fires. About 964,000 acres have burnt since wildfires began over a week ago.
In northern Alberta, more than 80 homes were destroyed in rural areas including Fox Lake, John D’Or Prairie, and Garden River, and more than 3,700 residents in that area were evacuated. “It was pretty far from us, from where we live, but we could see all the smoke coming up and it was just getting worse by the minute,” said resident Johnette Blesse.
Meanwhile, according to the CBC, firefighters criticized cuts to Alberta’s aerial attack teams as the fires burn; a former rappeller says that rappel teams could have made the difference in the ongoing firefight.
Government budget cuts have left the province short-handed in wildfire suppression. “We could have been difference-makers,” said Jordan Erlandson, a former member of Alberta’s Rapattack team.
The program once had 63 firefighters stationed around the province — including at Edson, Fox Creek, and Lac La Biche — and these are communities now threatened by one of the busiest early fire seasons in provincial history.
The rappelling program was cut in 2019 by the United Conservative government.
“They told us the program had been eliminated,” said former member Adam Clyne. “They just said budget.” A 2019 op-ed in the CBC News said, “As wildfire threat grows, UCP cuts to remote rappel team are a risky gamble,” and explained they saw the province’s plan as shortsighted.
“Against this backdrop of increasing wildfire risk and management concerns, the UCP government has announced cuts to its wildfire suppression program,” wrote author Mathieu Bourbonnais. “The proposed cuts and the rationale presented by the UCP government are short-sighted. Without doubt, these cuts will directly impact the safety and livelihoods of rural communities in Alberta. Among the immediate casualties is the Alberta Wildland Firefighter Rappel Program, which since 1983 has been the main line of defence for rural communities against wildfires that start in remote areas. Deployed provincially as nine crews of seven, the men and women in the program are trained to rappel from helicopters and aggressively contain fires while they still are small.”
The New York Times reported that about 24,000 people were out of their homes in the sparsely populated, largely northern areas of Alberta, with dozens of fires burning across nearly 1 million acres. The fire season, typically from March 1 to early October, already has tallied over 400 fires — an unusually high number. People have not forgotten the season of 2016, when fires burned from the forestland into the oil sands capital of Fort McMurray, Alberta.
That fire forced the evacuation of more than 90,000 people, destroyed more than 2,400 homes and businesses, and disrupted production at the United States’ largest source of imported oil. At more than 4 billion Canadian dollars, it remains Canada’s most costly disaster.
As was the case during the Fort McMurray fires, many of the current evacuees, a group that includes thousands of members of First Nations communities, have sought refuge in Edmonton, the province’s capital and second-largest city. This year’s fires are fueled by the same weather phenomena that caused the 2019 bushfires in Australia: GRIST Magazine reported that oil production was forced to halt after a state of emergency was declared this weekend.
The province, Canada’s largest producer of crude oil and natural gas, has discontinued production of the equivalent of 145,000 barrels of oil amidst the fires. And though recent rain showers have slowed the progression of some fires, storms could also bring lightning, according to Marc-André Parisien, a research scientist at the Canadian Forest Service.
UPDATE05/06/2023: Three wildfires burning near the boundary between British Columbia and Alberta have forced evacuation orders and an alert. Two of the fires are in the Peace River region, including the Red Creek Fire, covering 1,550 hectares (3,830 acres) northwest of Fort St. John, B.C., about 1,200 kilometres (745 miles) northeast of Vancouver.
CBC Canada reported that the evacuation order covers 61 homes in the area; Goodlow, B.C., and the surrounding region are also under evacuation orders ahead of the Boundary Lake Fire, which covers an area of 19 square kilometres (~4700 acres).
Boundary Lake Fire in the Prince George Fire Centre. (B.C. Wildfire Service)
Dozens of new wildfires were discovered across Alberta on Thursday amid high temperatures, dangerously dry conditions, and high winds. More than 10,000 people across Alberta are now affected by mandatory evacuation orders, according to a Global News Canada report.
Fire officials updated many Alberta Emergency Alerts throughout the day as the fires grew and threatened more properties.
An evening update from Alberta Wildfire said there were 72 active wildfires across the province — but in the hours after that bulletin, even more fires showed up on the government agency’s live dashboard. As of 11 p.m, it showed 79 fires, with 19 out of control; 25 were caused by humans, five by lightning — and the rest were still under investigation.
CBC Canada reported that one out-of-control fire has forced the evacuation of thousands of people from Drayton Valley and Brazeau County in west-central Alberta.
“Bring important documents, medication, food, water and supplies for at least three days,” town officials told 7,200 residents on its Facebook page late Thursday. “Take pets with you.”
The City of Edmonton has set up a reception centre for evacuees at the Expo
B.C. Wildfire Service mobile app — find it on the App Store or Google Play.
Centre in Edmonton. Bart Guyon of Brazeau County has been coordinating with the area’s fire chief to ensure county residents have the latest information and are able to evacuate swiftly. “It’s kind of like waking up in the middle of a nightmare,” Guyon said.
“Tactical evacuations are being done. This wildfire primarily affects oil and gas industry, but anyone within the area must evacuate,” the emergency alert said.
The evacuations in Brazeau County and Drayton Valley are the latest developments in a week that has seen a series of wildfires across central and northern Alberta. Many are burning out of control in hot, dry and windy conditions.
On Thursday, the fire in the Fox Lake area forced thousands of people from their homes. According to an update from Alberta Wildfire on Thursday afternoon, the wildfire covers about 4,400 hectares (~11,000 acres). Alberta Wildfire has forest area updates and fire data online, with maps and annual statistics on its Wildfire Status Dashboard website.
The documentary film Elemental: Reimagine Wildfire will be screened at Granada Theater in The Dalles, Oregon at 7 p.m. on Friday, May 5 and 1 p.m. Saturday, May 6. The film begins with views of a harrowing escape from Paradise, California, as the town was torched by wind-driven embers and burned within just hours of the fire’s start. The film features climate experts, Indigenous viewpoints, and fire survivors — and explores lessons from recent record-shattering fires across the West. The Columbia Gorge News reported that filmmaker Trip Jennings founded Balance Media and has worked with National Geographic for more than a decade. His films have won dozens of awards around the world and have aired on major networks on every continent.
Willamette Week reported that before this documentary began touring Oregon this spring — from Hood River to La Grande to Astoria — there was one statistic that director Trip Jennings wanted to add to the film:
“In California, 80 percent of homes that burn in wildfires are not surrounded by forests. Nationally, a majority of homes that burn in wildfires aren’t in forests.”
Why then, the film asks, are hundreds of millions of dollars spent annually fighting fires in forests? In response, Elemental explores fire’s natural ecology, how Indigenous burning practices could change the conversation, and how the best defense against wildfire begins with homes themselves.
Elemental has been selected for more than 40 film festivals and already has won numerous awards. The film is currently in theaters nationwide, and it will be available on streaming in June. SEE IT: Elemental tours Oregon during April and May. See a full list of screenings at elementalfilm.com/showtimes
Opening arguments were heard yesterday in a lawsuit against PacifiCorp claiming that its negligence started several devastating 2020 wildfires that burned across western Oregon. KEZI-TV reported that the class action suit was filed in September 2020, not long after the fire’s containment, by Linn County residents who lost their homes in the Beachie Creek Fire. The suit grew to include plaintiffs from other Oregon wildfires.
The complaint alleges that Pacific Power and its parent company, PacifiCorp, did not deactivate certain powerlines during the heavy winds in the late summer of 2020. When those east winds brought down trees, they connected with live powerlines, igniting fires that destroyed hundreds of structures and killed several people.
“PacifiCorp chose not to protect Oregonians — it did not live up to its obligation, it didn’t take any action to prevent fires, and now, in this case, PacifiCorp should bear the consequences,” said Nicholas Rosinia, attorney for the plaintiffs. KOBI5 News reported that Pacific Power attorneys countered that a decision to de-energize powerlines is complex and can’t be based on fire risk alone. “The possibility of an ignition must be weighed against the dangers of de-energization when whole cities and towns can be blanketed in darkness just when they need power the most,” said Doug Dixon, an attorney for the defendants.
The attorneys acknowledged that both Portland General Electric and Consumers Power, Inc. decided to turn off power in parts of their service areas around the Labor Day storms.
The Beachie Creek Fire was reported August 16, 2020 in the Opal Creek Wilderness about six miles northwest of Detroit Lake in Oregon, some 38 miles east of Salem. According to records in the daily national Incident Management Situation Report and GIS data, the fire was:
10 acres August 26, 10 days after it was reported
23 acres August 31, 15 days after it was reported
150 acres September 3, 18 days after it was reported
469 acres September 7, 22 days after it was reported; (before the winds began that night).
Plaintiffs are asking for more than $1.6 billion in damages, according to court documents. The trial is scheduled to last until at least mid-June.
GOES-17 photo of smoke from wildfires in Washington, Oregon, and California at 5:56 p.m. PDT Sept. 8, 2020. This image was captured during a very strong wind event. NASA photo
The Oregonian reported that the Labor Day fires burned more than 1.2 million acres in Oregon, destroyed upwards of 5,000 homes and structures, and claimed nine lives. PacifiCorp is the primary defendant in litigation from the fires; the Portland-based utility, Oregon’s second largest, did not shut down power to any of its 600,000 customers during the windstorm. Its lines have been implicated in six separate fires, one of which started in its California service territory and burned across the state line into Oregon.
Jurors will determine PacifiCorp’s responsibility, if any, in four of those fires: the Santiam Canyon fires east of Salem, the Echo Mountain Complex near Lincoln City, the South Obenchain Fire near Eagle Point, and the Two Four Two Fire near the southwest Oregon town of Chiloquin. This is a historic trial and will likely reshape the way Pacific Northwest electric utilities respond to increasing wildfire risks influenced by climate change, persistent drought conditions, and increasing numbers of acres burned each year.
In November 2022, PacifiCorp settled another case out of court with two families who sued over the Archie Creek Fire, which burned more than 130,000 acres in Douglas County in 2020.
strong intergovernmental agreement known as the Northwest Compact allows Alaska and other states and provinces to request or share resurces internationally.
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