Slave Lake Fires (Update 3): The Ghost Town
Posted by feww on May 18, 2011
The Grass in Slave Lake Has Turned Black
Wildfires consumed 2,000 hectares of Slave Lake destroying or damaging 1,000 buildings
“[Many hundreds of] homes or businesses have been destroyed by fire,” said mayor Karina Pillay-Kinnee. “There are hundreds more on top of that damaged.”
The city is a site of utter destruction with everything burned down, melted, turned into rubble and ash. The city looks like a miniature version of Hiroshima after the atom bomb was dropped on her.
“This is a first time experience for us,” the mayor said. “We had multiple fires on either end of the community. What I’m thankful for at this point is we have no loss of life.”
Neither the Hiroshima residents, nor the uranium miners and the coolies, had any chance, however.
Port Radium, Great Bear Lake, Northwest Territories, Canada.
Some 50 percent of the homes in the SE section of the city have been destroyed, Slave Lake Mayor Karina Pillay-Kinnee was quoted as saying. Many building were also lost in other parts, especially in the NW quadrant.
“When you turn the corner and whole subdivisions are gone—you don’t even recognize your community anymore, and that startled me,” the mayor said.
“I don’t know when in history we’ve evacuated at least 7,000 people in such a short period of time,” said Alberta Premier Ed Stelmach.
“We’ve had large grass fires, we’ve had forest fires, but not so many homes lost.”
Related Links
- Slave Lake on Fire
- Large parts of Alaskan (and Canadian) forests could be consumed by wildfires: FEWW forecast
- Wildfires Wreaking Havoc Across the U.S.
- US Wildfires: 50-percent more fires than the 10 year average
Fire Earth 
d-m said
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