Anyone remaining in Yellowknife, Ndılǫ and Dettah must leave by noon on Friday, residents were told in a fresh, blanket evacuation order for the city on Wednesday evening. Hundreds of vehicles had begun streaming down a smoky Highway 3 west of the city by the end of the day, with mercy flights due to take place throughout Thursday. Various Alberta communities, including Fox Creek, Valleyview and Red Deer, have opened up as hosts for evacuees, with more expected to follow. Cabin Radio is updating a page of supports for evacuees.
NWT environment minister Shane Thompson called it a “phased evacuation,” saying people in western areas of the city should leave first – as soon as possible, on Wednesday – alongside residents of Dettah and the Ingraham Trail. Here’s the document that sets out the exact plan and how you should proceed to evacuate by road or air.
Mayor of Yellowknife Rebecca Alty said the evacuation was being declared now because authorities believe the fire’s behaviour will allow time for everyone to get out on Wednesday night and Thursday. Flights will begin on Thursday morning and continue until everyone is out. An evacuation centre at Yellowknife’s multiplex will help everyone who needs it. “The city is not in immediate danger and there is a safe window for residents to leave by road or air,” Alty said.
Western areas of Yellowknife had already been on evacuation alert. A separate evacuation order had been issued for homes and cabins along the highway west of the municipal boundary.
A wildfire has been steadily closing on the city all week, moving within 20 kilometres of Yellowknife on Tuesday and forecast to end Wednesday as close as 11 kilometres away. Hundreds of residents were estimated to have already left prior to an order being issued. Wednesday’s announcement marked an abandonment of the city’s previous plan to handled a nearby wildfire, in favour of a road and air evacuation that had until this week been discounted as a likely outcome.
Up till now, the city’s stated plan had relied primarily on moving residents around the city out of harm’s way, using facilities like the multiplex to house anyone displaced who had nowhere else to go. A road or aerial evacuation had been described as a last resort. “It would have to be something that would be a massive kind of incident,” city manager Sheila Bassi-Kellett said at a briefing two days before the order was announced. The window given by officials suggests they believe Thursday’s weather will hold the fire long enough to allow clear passage for thousands of people down Highway 3, the only road connecting Yellowknife to the rest of Canada. Cities of any size in Alberta and BC are many hundreds of kilometres away.
https://cabinradio.ca/142263/news/yellowknife/full-evacuation-for-yellowknife-ndilǫ-and-dettah/
Comment: Forest fires have been playing havoc all over the world this year. The Canadian fires are not that unusual. They have a fire season every year, but this year that especially numerous and extend further north than usual. Even tundra is burning this year. Normally this is too boggy to burn, but it dried out this year. I remember tundra vegetation being two feet deep or so. that’s a lot of fuel. Luckily these northern fires not near as fast moving as the Maui fire.
The total evacuation of Yellowknife is a massive undertaking. There’s one long road out which entails a 22 hour drive to Alberta. Tankers and tow trucks have been stationed along the evacuation route. The Canadian Air Force is also airlifting residents out of Yellowknife and other towns. The town of Enterprise with a population of only a hundred or so, has already been 90% destroyed by fire.
Norther Canada is so large and remote that the only real response is vigilance and effective evacuation plans. I don’t think it’s going to get any easier in the years to come. Hawaii is going to have to something with their land management. It will be expensive. I doubt they can bring back their sugar plantations.
TTG
On a positive note no hurricanes in the gulf. I also posted weeks ago about some coral reefs getting larger.
“It will be expensive.”
But will it be diverse? Firebreaks and backburning work. Having 20,000 people abondon everything to drive 1,000 miles away doesn’t sound like a lot of thought was put into the potential problem over the prior decades. It does reinforce obedience to executive power.
Fred,
It wasn’t a problem in the Great North until recently. A program of firebreaks and backburning around every town and village in the NWT will be expensive and, God forbid, a massive government program. Even for Lahaina, it will require an expensive government program.
TTG,
Just like trees falling in forests when no one is around.
Fred,
It is in fact very diverse. Lloyd, Antony, Jake, Kamala and … wait for it … Smokin’ Joe (yes the secret is revealed here first) are in fact burning down large areas of North America and Hawaii as part of a brilliant national security strategy, which you are too discrete and politic to mention.
Their unrivaled reasoning is as follows. If Vladimir Putin and President Xi (I almost typed ‘Chairman’) are allowed by their respective intelligence agencies and nefarious sleeper cells within America (“O beautiful, for spacious skies, for amber waves of grain, for purple .”. – – yes, that America) to understand that the entire place is burning down and the cities, air force and army bases need to be evacuated …
“And there’s nothing anyone can do about it..”
(That voice again)
.. well then there won’t be any point whatsoever in doing a certain nasty aggressive thing to us with their nasty aggressive missiles, will there be?
It’s a diverse strategy, for diverse America, by a diverse team of several strategists who understand what divers do when raging wildfires destroys their lives and property as evil Vladimir and evil Xi look on hopelessly, because they failed to embrace diversity sufficiently so as to better burn down the continents where their people live.
F&L,
Illegal aliens, in their interstellar UFOs, are using direct energy weapons to start these fires in flyover country, in preparation for their arrival. A few more fires, and a few more 15 minute cities, and they’ll be ready for the big one.
The interstellar illegal aliens are like a Cheerios picnic compared to the intergalactic illegal aliens.
Will they be Vorlons, Shadows, or are we stuck with the Minbari?
No sooner do I finish explaining to the undercover … agent who lives in Las Vegas that the name of his forsaken dustheep of a western gambling mecca was in fact a forlorn and inconsequential USAF stopover that the guys would laugh about prophetically because it’s name was an anagram for Gas Slave, but he hangs up without even thanking me for giving him a doofy pickup line for free.
And in a dream, billy roche calls saying “TTG expects us to Google ‘Yellowknife Canada’ all by ourselves?”
Yes, billy, it’s what a hard Army life does to some people.
“You mean like calling fires causing an ongoing international catastrophe requiring wholesale evacuations of entire provinces of the 2nd or 3rd largest nation on earth by area — ‘playing havoc?’
It’s possibly worse than that, billy.
“As bad as never in all these years of SST followed by turcopolier dot com – not revealing the real secret of the John F Kennedy assassination?”
I assume you are referring to the fact that Lee Harvey Oswald was in the US Marine Corps, billy, and his wife who he met in the USSR was named Marina?
“Exactly. The Warren report never mentioned that.”
No, the Warren Report did include the information regarding Oswald’s wife’s first name.
“I see. I think I’m beginning to understand now.”
That’s right billy, you are. And it’s best not to speak of it.
But then I woke up and realized I must have been dreaming. And I went to the smart TV in my living room as soon as I had my morning coffee in hand and unsubscribed from the Reverend Billy Graham channel, using the handy remote control.
“You are a liar. You got iced coffee this morning from the corner provisioner, not coffee — don’t believe for an instant that we aren’t watching you.”
But I couldn’t tell if it was my phone, my TV, or my imagination. Or was it a dream within a dream?
“Or the undercover … agent from Las Vegas, right F&L?”
By golly, it was the voice of billy roche again.
It’s difficult to grasp the scale of this. I have friends who were in Ft. McMurray evacuation in 2016, but the distance there was much smaller, so there was no need to plan for refueling and tow trucks. Kudos to the local and federal authorities, Canada has always had strong and competent fire service, and I haven’t seen that change since I moved to the US. Back in the day, I used to attend a scientific conference at a firefighter wilderness training camp just outside Algonquin Park in Ontario, these are great people that are likely involved in current events.
People who complain about the lack of management don’t understand the geography of the area. This is not a forest that can be managed, this is tundra that is frozen 9 month of the year and is typically too wet to support any fire. It is also mostly impassable, since the ground is mostly bog. So any sort of regular maintenance is out of the question.
The conspiracy theorists are outdoing themselves over these wildfires. Social media is full of utter nonsense. They think the cars in Hawaii which burned up, cars containing fuel, need to have been ignited by directed energy beams because cars can’t suffer the visible damage from being ignited by exploding gas tanks. Global warming is postulated as causitive by saner types. I give that passing grades, but the breakdowns of late capitalism and consequent misuse of resources and neglect of infrastructure and training I give equally high marks. One scary thought is that this era is a harbinger of increased movement into cities. Maybe, but if so, imagine large crowded cities with zero investment in planning and everything for the ultra wealthy and security state. And then fires.
The fires occurring on a massive scale and over a long period in Quebec was pretty unusual, that stuff is usually reserved for the western side of the country. I blame those fires for the very temperate/overcast summer that we had over here in New England.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/ushome/index.html
10:14 Eastern and Daily Mail has Yellowknife story leading, but nothing about the conviction of Lucy Letby, Britain’s serial killer of neonates. Weird.
Lucy Letby
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/08/18/lucy-letby-trial-jury-verdict-live-updates-baby-deaths/
Lucy Letby has been found guilty of murdering seven babies and attempting to murder six others while working as a nurse at the Countess of Chester Hospital.
The verdicts confirm the 33-year-old from Hereford as Britain’s worst serial baby killer.
Letby was convicted of murdering five baby boys and two baby girls during a year-long killing spree between June 2015 and June 2016.
During the same period, she also attacked and tried to kill four boys and two girls using a variety of different methods.
Among her murder victims were two babies from a set of identical triplets. She also attacked three sets of twins.
The jury, made up of four men and seven women, spent more than 100 hours deliberating, and delivered their verdicts to the 22 charges in batches that could not be reported until now.
Her crimes mean Letby is likely to spend the rest of her life in prison.
————-
Lucy Letby: Quiet ‘geek’ who became a killer feared she’d never have children of her own. There were many sides to the neonatal nurse but few who met her would have put her down as a conniving and manipulative murderer.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/08/18/how-lucy-letby-became-britains-most-prolific-baby-killer/
——————-
DT wildly innacurate re “most prolific serial ..”. Several women were hung in England at the turn of the 19th to 20th century for murders amounting to 400 or more individually in the final gasps of the era of foundling hospitals which were infanticide factories. Napoleon had to have a large circular contraption constructed similar to an amusement park ride, but much wider in diameter after he opened the large foundling hospital in Paris. Because the mothers were too embarrassed to leave the children at the door, so this way they could drop them in a basket, ring a bell, and a guard would wheel the apparatus around to retrieve the foundling at the front door.
“Our ancestors were God fearing religious folk who would never have practiced abortion if it was on offer.”
Yes. The check is in the mail, And I promise I .. . And I’m … … a politician you can trust.
Moment nurse Lucy Letby questioned by police after arrest:
https://youtu.be/wdOEyZejkmc
If “Letby” is pronounced “Let be” it makes you wonder. Was Lucy on the loosey?
It makes you wonder also because “neonatalism” is an inherited trait, it is thought, whereby certain people retain a very youthful facial appearance long into life, even old age, which is predominant in some ethnic groups but not others. Theorists conjectured that it served to decrease interpersonal violence due to the inborn tendency, also preservative of life, to not harm infants and young children. I add, as a strictly personal observation, that in some peoples this trait appears to me to be entirely missing. It’s especially absent in the angular, harsh looking faces of ruling classes or aristocrats, but that’s a generalization to be wary of. Counterexamples abound in each direction. Babyfaced killers and hatchet faced saints.
QUOTE: Hawaii is going to have to something with their land management.
LAND MANAGEMENT: climate change blah, blah, blah.
Landowner Liability!!! Those absent landowners allowing their land to go fallow for years! Former sugar and pineapple plantations. They’re the ones who are responsible for massive lands covered with wild grasses. Just sitting there doing absolutely nothing. Unfortunately land management is something that seems to have a streak of “freedom” standing in the way.
Some countries have enacted laws that allow people to take over land that is not being used, the super-wealthy don’t like it. No one likes stupid homeowner associations telling people they cannot have a garden. This is different! Whole societies are ruined by these folk that do absolutely nothing!
Yep, they are they ones who are accountable for this disaster!
Thanx
Kim,
The regulatory agencies would not let Hawaiian Electric conduct tree and other vegetation clearing, when they tried; and there are plenty of similar restrictions on property owners. H E will go into bankruptcy before those who lost homes see a dollar from that company. Another law passed by the legislature composed of members of the same party that created the regulatory won’t fix anything. Neither will letting squatters take over currently vacant land.
Fred,
Hawaii Electric was prioritizing switching to renewable energy and spent very little on fire mitigation and maintenance. That began when the 2008 fuel prices spiked and was reinforced by state legislation in 2015 pushing for renewable energy. Regulations certainly played their part, but it was also the push to free themselves from expensive imported oil and remain profitable that caused HE to neglect maintenance. The “Daily Mail” has a good article on this.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12417253/Hawaii-Electric-focused-obsessively-renewable-energy-spending-245-000-wildfire-safety.html
TTG,
The ‘experts’ did NOT fail to understand that the electrons running down those HV lines could start a fire regardless of them being generated by wind, solar, or wood chips, or anything else. They chose the politically expedient thing to do to placate the left. A hundred, probably many more, people are dead because of it. 2008 is more than a decade ago. The regulatory agency could have adjusted rates to cover the fuel cost until that ‘transition’ – whatever it was going to be – was complete; while AT THE SAME TIME making sure the vegitation was cleared properly. This is another example of the ideology of the left meeting the harshness of reality.
Fred,
The decision to pursue energy sources other than imported oil in 2008 was an economic decision to placate customers who are paying through the nose for power in Hawaii. This pursuit now happens to coincide with the leftist ideological push for renewable energy sources. Perhaps there should have been more regulation to ensure that Hawaiian Electric maintained their infrastructure to a higher standard, but that would have been leftist overreach, maybe even socialism.
TTG,
Socialism is what drove the pursuit of ‘renewable’ energy rather than low cost, high reliability electricity safely delivered to their homes 24/7.
Fred,
HE has been pushing home solar with storage batteries by offering rebates for both. That’s about as low cost, highly reliable and safely delivered as you can get. That’s self-reliance, not socialism.
TTG,
You are an expert with artillery and terrain maps, but you are wrong about all the solar that has been pushed for decades. HE didn’t convince everyone to go solar since the 70s, nor did they start this only in 2008. Try to learn some basics before shoving your foot into it.
” In 2020, Hawaii had a total summer capacity of 2,994 MW through all of its power plants, and a net generation of 9,079 GWh.[2] The corresponding utility-scale electrical energy generation mix in 2021 was 65.4% petroleum-derived fuels ,….. 5.6% solar, ….per wiki via the EIA.
Less than 6%, which includes all that daylight powered rooftop panels that have been federally subsidized for decades. A subsidy does not make something low cost, it only shifts the cost to taxpayers.
https://www.eia.gov/state/analysis.php?sid=HI
Fred,
This is from an HE newsletter from April 2023. Much of it is also quoted in your EIA link.
“The number of private solar systems on Hawaiian Electric’s grids rose to nearly 97,000 in 2022 and is on pace to surpass 100,000 in 2023. At the end of 2022 there were 96,912 solar systems across the five islands served by Hawaiian electric and 155 megawatts of battery storage. The number of systems, most of which are rooftop, rose by 4,408, or 4.8% from 2021. … Overall 22% of the company’s residential customers have rooftop solar and 35% of customers in single family homes have solar.”
The battery storage rebate program is fairly new. It allows HE to exert control over how much and when customer generated electricity can be sent back into the grid. This is a problem that plagues all electric utilities. The battery storage is not only good for the home owner in providing more consistent power, but it solves the utility company’s issue of controlling power grid fluctuations and maintaining grid stability. Even with subsidies, HE is building generating capacity largely through customer investment in building that capacity.
You note that in 2020 “Hawaii had a total summer capacity of 2,994 MW through all of its power plants.” In HE’s annual sustainability report for 2022, a total solar capacity of 1,118 MW is stated. This solar capacity increased from under 200 Mw in 2012. Solar in Hawaii has not been stagnant for decades.
While this may be a good news story, it doesn’t make up for the lack of maintenance and clearing of vegetation that seems to have caused the Lahaina fire.
Kim Sky,
The solution for those now fallow sugar cane plantations around Lahaina will not be simple. The company that owns the land (at least as of 2016) planned on keeping the land in some kind of agricultural use after sugar cane became nonviable, but ran into a lot of problems. This article from 2016 explains a lot. It would be nice if the locals, the land owners and the state could come up with some kind of managed use for those fields, but it won’t be easy to come up with a use that fits the climate and environment.
https://www.honolulumagazine.com/the-end-of-an-era-hawaiis-last-sugar-mill-closes-forever/#:~:text=It%27s%20also%20been%20the%20livelihood,and%20wrapping%20up%20loose%20ends.
In general, the policy of the state is to enforce land planning that keeps land historically in agriculture designated as agriculture. County zoning has to operate within that limitation. The theory is at some point in the future some sort of agriculture would make economic sense. Until that magic crop appears, the land is fallow. Meanwhile, in many areas, irrigation is required and the political landscape is to keep the water from the wet (east) side on the east side so getting water for that land will be an issue. During the fire, the irrigation company in Lahaina requested permission from the state to divert water into their reservoirs to fill them. The state refused permission until they got an OK from the east-side water user. By the time that happened, the fire prevented the irrigation co from reaching the necessary valves.
We had a nice fire here the last couple of days (think it is out now) just north of Wahiawa in the old pineapple fields. A lot of that is now state-owned and choke homeless camps. Was watching helos drop water when I was at the gym on Schofield.
When the HawaiiaNative Hawaiians were the only people living there, how did they manage that land? What was the fire regime, if any?
Do the present-day HawaiiaNative Hawaiians remember how their ancestors managed that land when their ancestors were the ones managing that land? If so, would it make sense to place that land under HawaiiaNative Hawaiian management?
different clue,
Native Hawaiians know full well how their ancestors managed the lands and waters. Many would have a nostalgia for those times, but I feel only an adventurous and rugged few would want to fully return to those practices. But there are lessons from those old ways that may help and the present government and land owners should be listening to what the native back to nature advocates have to say.
Fires have burned in some unusual places this year. But despite msm attempts to maufacture more climate hysteria for gullible boomers to swallow hook, line and sinker (like Ukraine, Covid, Russiagate, WMDs, etc) wildfires in the US are far below the ten year average both in terms of the total number of fires (-3,000) and acreage burned (-2.8 mil acres).
With that tropical storm approaching California, this trend will likely hold for the rest of the year.
https://www.nifc.gov/nicc-files/sitreprt.pdf
Did Lahaina occupy turf of some special importance regarding geolocation?
“No, Oprah has her own anti-topol ICBM missile defense, but Bill, Larry and Jeff chipped in because her pillows …”
Her pillows? But isn’t there a 007 Movie where …
“Nope, you need to talk to the man on the corner.”
Not the coroner?
“At the rate you’re going ..”
The Transfer of a Russian ICBM to North Korea?
August 17, 2023, by Theodore Postol.
https://beyondparallel.csis.org/the-transfer-of-a-russian-icbm-to-north-korea/