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[moonbeamsfanfic]

The news stations aren't keeping up with the fire updates, but I found a guy on Twitter who is updating every few minutes with photos from his cell phone.

His latest -- taken 7 minutes ago -- shows what's left of the Town Hall.

Damn.

Comments

[redwolf]

Ouch!

How are they tackling the fires? I think you can use the planes that scoop water out of the lakes there. We can't use them here due a lack of big chunks of still water, so need to use helicopters, but can the planes still make lake runs at night? Australia doesn't even own the helicopters, they're hired out for several months of the year from a company that sounds like International Rescue from the Thunderbirds.

[moonbeamsfanfic]

Yeah, they have the water bombers out there scooping belly-fulls out of the lake to dump on the fires. But apparently, one of the reasons the fires spread so quickly through town was because they'd had to call off the planes. If the winds exceed 90km/h or the waves over 4ft, it's not safe for the pilot crews to make the dives. Once the planes were pulled away, the fire took less than an hour to start consuming the town. And no, they can't run at night.

They got back at it yesterday and are continuing the fight today with lots of extra firefighters from all over Canada, so it looks like things are calming down. About 40% of the town is confirmed ashes, but the ground crews are trying to save the remainder and the rest are working to keep the now three forest fires in the town's area from getting worse or spreading further out. It's hard though because the wind is still strong, there's no rain on the horizon, and there's also another 116 wildfires across the province that need to be fought as well. Resources, firefighters and equipment