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mcmatterson

Those photos are nothing compared to some of the firsthand videos:

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=fort+mcmurray++...

It's honestly like something straight out of an apocalypse movie. Horrifying.

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I live in Alberta (Calgary) so have obviously been following this closely. Two things stand out in the videos.

1. People are still very courteous while evacuating. I imagined it would be people driving across lawns and through parks. Instead most people are driving on the proper side of the street and letting others in.

2. We shouldn't take forest fires for granted and we should evacuate earlier. Tuesday morning this fire was a non story, then without warning people are driving down their street with 60m flames on the sidewalk. And not just a few hold outs, majority of the population came very close to injury or death. Fort McMurray has basically one way in and out (Hwy 63). If it had been blocked in both directors, this would be a much different story.

In regard to point 1, I think people were TOO courteous. Seriously, everyone is evacuating and heading in the same direction, so drive on BOTH sides of the road. In some of the videos I've seen, I'm really surprised that people didn't get trapped and die because the orderly evacuation that only uses half the possible road bandwidth.

Emergency vehicles need to go the other way.

And people driving to pick up e.g. grandma, who can't drive, at her house.

Fair point.

As there were only two fatalities in the entire evacuation of nearly 80,000 people I think your assertion that people were "TOO courteous" is incorrect.

They were as curteous as needed to ensure a timely evacuation with a minimum of loss of life.

If someone had started being 'less courteous' chaos would have broken out and many more would have died.

As much as I hate the cliched phrase it would appear that 'keep calm and carry on' was the prudent thing to do in this situation.

You're probably right. I'm guessing my fear at being confronted by that situation would have led me to behave inappropriately. It's like being stuck in the slow lane, but the consequences aren't being late to work, they consequences are your entire family dying in the car beside you. I can't imagine how horrible that must have been for everyone involved.

Fort McMurray evacuee here.

I was in the Thickwood neighbourhood, and we were in complete gridlock. This only changed once the RCMP did exactly what you suggest -- they used both sides of the highway.

Both sides on the north side of the city were used for traffic heading north. Same on the south side.

Once they did that, traffic started moving again.

Glad you got out .. those videos were truly terrifying.

Emergency vehicles often need the other lane to go either direction. Maximizing capacity is a more nuanced thing than one use/direction.

Fort McMurray evacuee here. One of those Youtube videos is from me. It was indeed apocalyptic to drive through the fire. Watching buildings burning as a fire raged on both sides of the car. Trying to reassure my kids that everything was going to be fine.

We're at a camp in Wandering River now, but unsure of the future.

This is a video of the fire actually overtaking the inside of a fleeing resident's house. It was caught on his home security camera.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/fort-mcmurray-man-wat...

It's what it's like when forest fires engulf a community. Here's a couple others:

- http://s1.webmshare.com/m7gd8.webm Russia 2015(?)

- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qPpOXH0ADSg Australia 2003

Wow...horrifying indeed :( For some reason, I found these front-yard bushes casually on fire some of the most dramatic images: https://youtu.be/PCc1FvZ3g0Q?t=134

Probably because that side of the street looks relatively normal except for, you know, that well groomed plant is on fire.

Yes, it's also what stuck out to me. As he drives away, you can see the fire consume the entire bush (looked like a fallen down tree to me?) and develop into a five-meter long torch.

Some of the fires in those videos have a strange purplish or blue glow at their edges. Is that flame burning outside the visible spectrum and can it be seen with the naked eye? Example: https://youtu.be/Fym6X-JvEOs?t=1m8s Or just an artifact of the recording technology?

If it's burning outside the visible spectrum, and the same part isn't also emitting visible light too, then that's really scary - it would mean that every time you see a fire like that, it's actually considerably larger than it seems.

I am curious whether you could see hydrogen burning on a camera like these dashcams.

Edit: This is absolutely crazy. What is going on in this video? https://youtu.be/Fym6X-JvEOs?t=1m59s

I would say it's just the auto white balance on the camera trying to deal with an unnaturally warm (color temp) scene by adding blue. Not sure what kind of street lights they have there, but they are also bluish which would imply the WB is significantly off

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