How the deadly CFB Wainwright fire got so dangerous, so fast

When it comes to the tragedy in Wainwright, the question is, how fast can a grass fire whipped up by the wind travel, and could anyone have predicted this? Weather and fire behaviour is central to understanding what happened at CFB Wainwright, where a fast spreading fire claimed the lives of four Canadian soldiers, and injured dozens more. This is how the general in charge described it. During the conduct of a training, a grass fire ignited in the training area. And commonly strong winds cause the fire to spread rapidly and shift direction towards the range administrative area. These observations related to the general from the commander at the scene are critical. I spoke to my commander on the ground last night and this morning and he said within 30 seconds to a minute they saw no fire and then there was a fire right on top of them. It is not normal for a fire to move a kilometer in 30 to 60 seconds. So it's not normal for a fire to move a kilometer in 30 to 60 seconds, is it? Mike Flanagan is an expert in wildfire behavior. It was warm, dry, and windy, and there was a cold front approaching. That cold front is important because when the fire started, as the wind direction changed, so did the area it covered. Using his pen, Flanagan explained how a fire moving in a narrow column in one direction could shift. from the southwest towards the northeast, and the most intense part of the fire is the head of the fire. In this case, it's in my pen. But then the wind shifts to northwest, and the side of the fire becomes a head. Now that line of fire is a new wider head, a wall of fire, potentially picking up speed and intensity. Then there's the conditions on the ground. June was wet, grass was growing, then it dried. says the moisture level rating for the area the fire danger was in the red on the top is the fine fuel moisture code and it was in the extreme category add to that the fire weather index which measures the potential intensity of a spreading fire and it was extreme as well then add into this dangerous recipe the wind warning which included Wainwright i know the observations conditions for that afternoon. Winds did pick up when the cold front came close to about 50 kilometers per hour but it was a gusty wind as well and gusts were recorded as high as 82 kilometers per hour. Now would that explain the speed of the fire the general described? So typically we use a rule of thumb of a grass fire can spread 10 percent of the wind speed. So if the wind speed was 50 kilometers per hour, that would be a spread rate of five kilometers in an hour. This is a rapidly spreading wildfire, that we can all agree on, and it can outrun most people in extreme conditions. So you cannot outrun it unless you're Usain Bolt or something. Flanagan says while the public understands the danger of forest fires… So grass fires sometimes doesn't get the respect or the perception is that grass fires aren't a danger, but the reality is grass fires are a significant threat and danger. Hi, I'm John Valiant. John Valiant is the author of Fire Weather. He says Albertans have experienced many abnormally fast-moving fires. Starting off with the Chisholm Fire in 2001, that was one of the fastest ever recorded. Slave Lake in 2011 moved at lightning speed. Fort McMurray surprised thousands of Albertans with the speed with which it moved. Valiant says he's been at conferences in Ottawa in 2024 with members of the government and military where lessons of fire behavior were shared. And so what we really saw in Wainwright, this terrible tragedy, is a textbook case of a really fast-moving fire moving faster than we are used to, but not faster than Albertans have experienced. While the Canadian Armed Forces and fire marshals investigate the circumstances, Valiant says part of this is a human perception problem, how people base their behavior on past experiences. We have learned through, again, painful experience, that fires move now in ways that we're not used to and thank goodness most of us have not experienced.