The wildfire that roared through Fort McMurray, Alberta, Canada, last May has been called the worst fire in Canadian history. Its devastation is staggering: More than 100,000 residents and nearby workers were evacuated at different stages of the fire, and more than 2,200 square miles of land and 2,400 structures burned in two provinces: Alberta and its eastern neighbor, Saskatchewan. With the fire only 70 percent contained to date, its economic impact is yet to be tallied.
The wildfire that roared through Fort McMurray, Alberta, Canada, last May has been called the worst fire in Canadian history. Its devastation is staggering: More than 100,000 residents and nearby workers were evacuated at different stages of the fire, and more than 2,200 square miles of land and 2,400 structures burned in two provinces: Alberta and its eastern neighbor, Saskatchewan. With the fire only 70 percent contained to date, its economic impact is yet to be tallied.
And the environmental cost of the crisis is expected to be steep as well. According to theCanadian Forest Service, the fire now accounts for 10 percent of Canada’s total carbon emissions. A whopping 170 tons of carbon are released into the atmosphere for every hectare of scorched ground in a fire like this, researchers say. By late May, when the fire was still far from contained, that tally had reached 85 million tons of emissions.
But there is another noticeable impact of the fire that’s come to the fore in recent weeks, one that is harder to measure by tons and square miles. It’s the human impact of losing grip on an industry that has driven northern Alberta’s metropolitan growth for decades.
Image credit: Fort McMurray Wildfire via Beacon Energy News
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