That is a good argument for thinking for yourself. I don't understand why the people who think their government is run by idiots (everywhere) then just sit down and wait to be told to evacuate by the same halfwits. This isn't the first time this has happened, and it certainly won't be the last.

I guess humankind can be divided into three groups:

1) The ones who have the sense to think for themselves, and leave ahead of orders;
2) The ones who won't move until they're told to;
3) The ones who are told to leave, and won't.

Sue

There are many cases where my thoughts would echo Sue's. Certainly, people should make provisions for unexpected events. Many don't, which is frustrating; and these are the people who make the best human interest story for the media.

On the other hand, this particular event is a bit of an oddball. As I understand it, a fire that would normally be considered a safe distance from town, and was being actively suppressed, turned into a monster. Unusually strong and steady winds pushed it into the edge of town at highway speed. This seems like a firestorm phenomenon. The same winds and the waves they caused on the lake grounded the water bombers that had been fighting the fire.

There were a lot of people with their trailers packed and ready to go. But the fire moved so quickly that all the roads out were cut before officials and individuals could react. By the time people had any realistic indication that it was time to bug out, there was no way to get out.

I don't know if I would have fared all that much better given the circumstances.

That's the way it's happened in other places. They create their own wind, they can turn in a second on what appears to be a whim. They've made a beeline for the only buildings on a flat plain, why?

An acquaintance in SoCal was evacuating several haltered horses and the fire was coming after them. He turned his head to look back just in time to see the wind change and blow the flames 180 degrees right back into the burned area and it went out. He said afterward that he wasn't a religious man, but he got closer to being one that day than ever before.

Others aren't that lucky. How late is waiting too long?

Sue

How long is too long is an individual decision, but when you can't get your vehicle out of the driveway because fire trucks are bumper to bumper, responding to active flames that are about a quarter to one half mile from your residence, it might be time to pack up.

i have loaded up our van twice. We had a priority list which helped immensely. Interestingly enough, as far as I could tell, none of our immediate neighbors did anything at all in the way of making preparations to leave, or even wet down their property. But then it is also probable that none of them has any experience with wildfires. No official statement was ever issued for residents in our immediate area.

The suppression work was close enough that my wife received some over spray from a helicopter drop working about a quarter mile away.

That's the million dollar question. As an individual, you need information to make good decisions. In places and situations where there's a major storm and a lot of media coverage, you can get a sense of what's going on. That wasn't the case here.

Sometimes taking individual action without information is the wrong thing to do. If you look at the photo in this Globe & Mail article, you can see people bugging out into the fire, on a highway that had been technically closed but not yet barricaded.

The speed at which this fire went sideways (as little as an hour by some reports) seems to have caught the agency responsible flat-footed. Strong winds were in the forecast, but they came in considerably faster. Some people from the town say alerts/evacuation should have started the night before. They have a point. There was a major communication breakdown. The only bright spot is that no lives have been lost.

I would have said that was waiting too long .

Some people have trouble realizing that if the fire doesn't get to their place, they can go back. Simple, but hard for some people to wrap their heads around.

Sue

Here's another story from CBC with useful details.

Local residents learned more from each other using Twitter and Facebook than they did from the people in charge.

There's a lot to be learned from the "cascade failure" of essential services in a small centre with limited resources. This was coupled with a rather inexplicable communication failure from the provincial agency tasked with handling such events. It seems some essential lessons do not "take" unless learned the hard way.

Another way social media is transforming the world, and one I hadn't thought about. I'd always assumed social media wouldn't be much help in an emergency/disaster situation because power would be off, cell towers down, etc. Obviously not; since I'm in charge of the emergency preparedness group in our neighborhood, it might be time to take another look at using social media to spread the word since many are more "plugged in" there than anywhere else.

Many government agencies are turning to social media to "get the word out". The CDC launched a facebook page this week.


buckeye

When the radio station went off the air, people used texts and Facebook updates to find out about the evacuation order, closed highways, and other relevant information. Apparently cell service was spotty, but it lasted longer than any other information source. Similar to other events, you could get texts and some data through even if you couldn't make a voice call.

Looks like oil pipelines and production facilities are seeing some effects too. Part of that is damage to infrastructure like the electrical grid, and part of it is pulling operations crews out of uncertain areas and keeping oversize loads off the roads. Something like 100,000 bpd shut down now and perhaps 200,000 soon if the fire situation doesn't settle down. That doesn't include delays in drilling and oilsands construction. It's promising that the number of overall fires has dropped from 100 to 85 and the number of out-of-control fires has dropped from 36 to 21.