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Originally Posted by Mean Mr. Mustard
Honest question but what could they even do at this point in time other than putting people into harms way? It appears to be at a size where only an absolutely massive fire break would be able to stop it and there really isn't any time to do that. The only thing that I could think of would be for air support from helicopters form 408 to be jury rigged with water carrying capacity.
I am not a wildland fire fighter by any stretch but I know quite a few of them and from asking a few of them about this fire, when it reaches this size, with these conditions there isn't much that can be done that doesn't significantly place people's lives at risk.
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I work with BC Wildfire as a wild land firefighter and I can confirm that this is accurate. A fire not only this size but more importantly a fire this powerful, where there is fire travelling through the canopy of trees, is extremely extremely difficult to manage. You are going to be operating with a very defensive approach, creating large fire breaks far in advance (sometimes kilometres) on the fires path. Canopy fires are borderline unstoppable. You really need weather to cooperate and it looks like conditions are extremely unfavourable for the firefighters.
As far as managing the fires within the city I can't comment on that as that is largely structural firefighting so I don't know if more resources would help there.
However seeing CAN-TF2 being deployed from Calgary is only going to help, these are highly trained men and women that deal exactly with these types of emergencies. I wouldn't be surprised to see CAN-TF1 located in Vancouver deployed as well.
The best news is that it appears everyone has been evacuated safely and Albertans are all reaching out to help. Times like these really galvanize communities and Albertans will again show the country the great people they are.