Luckily I don't live in Ft Mac any longer, but many friends and some family do. They are all evac'd now, except some that are in L/E and one that is a firefighter at Suncor, whose fire dept (all the mine operations have HUGE fire departments of their own with the most advanced stuff out there) have been stood to for emergency deployments.
This is a huge deal, for Canada and America too. The USA gets 33%, some say up to nearly 45 or even 50% of its imported oil, right from Ft Mcmurrray. Also, the US defense posture has a majority of its oil reserves counted in Ft Mac. Both of the largest mines, Suncor and Syncrude have suspended operations due to, well, no people there to work. That means today and going forward, no oil being produced, which will soon have a trickle, or pour down rather, effect on US oil imports. Canada gives the USA a HUGE, HUGE discount on oil, even with the depressed prices, and before that too, from current market values. So, not only will the import shortfall be bad for the USA, but the replacement oil will be much more expensive. Obviously this will hammer the Canadian economy too, in a time where Alberta has had 100s of thousands of layoffs, bankruptcies, and so on, from an already terrible depression due to the price of oil.
Also, the wind right now has been in an odd direction. If it switches to west ---> east as per normal, the fire chief on the scene has said the remainder of the town not burnt, will burn, without question. We'll know today or tomorrow likely if Ft Mac will be completely destroyed. As it stands, Beacon Hill, Abasand, and other areas that house the tech sector of the town, the beating heart with all the mech shops, stores, warehouses, tooling, infrastructure, and so on...are gone.
Disaster doesn't cover it right now. The home I owned there is gone, as is the entire block, nothing left but the water piping sticking up in many places.
twitter.com/firefighters1st/status/727876626269134849
This entire area was made up of 800 to 1.2 mil dollar homes. Adios.
twitter.com/RyanJeffriesWFG
Ft Mac is/was the richest city in N.A. Hands down, and not just IMO. Harley Davidson for example has said it has more bikes per capita by a huge margin than anywhere else in the world there. And so on. Last 2 years it's been hit hard by commodities prices worldwide, but even still Canada gets a huge share of its income in trade from the oil produced there. The effect of losing it won't even be understood for a while, but it's going to be catastrophic at worst, and serious at best for this country.
This is going to have some pretty serious repercussions for all of us, Candians and Americans both.
Thanks for your thoughts about the people here, but this ain't over, and won't be for a long time, we're all going to take a hit from this. Big time.
Nearly 100,000 Canadians have been displaced from this, and it's only going to go worse before it improves. We're taking in some friends and family, we almost sold our 5th wheel and RV this week, turned down 2 offers. Maybe that happened for a reason, as now we can put up another 8 people with both of them, they are 8 hours away but on their way.
