The Fire In Fort McMurray Was a Good Thing? (ML)

Summary

My inquiry project is about the wildfire in Fort McMurray and some of it's positive points. I chose this topic because at the time when I created this, this fire was all over the news. Also where ever you would go, you could hear someone talking about how terrible this fire was. I wanted to show people that this fire wasn't 100% bad so I chose this for my inquiry project.

The Fire In Fort McMurray Was a Good Thing?

The wild fire in Fort McMurray was first noticed on May first 2016. Back then it was so small that you could hardly see it from a satellite. Now however the small fire was HUGE measuring in 601,593 hectares which is bigger than Prince Edward Island. This fire caused hundreds of people to evacuate and move out of their homes. 2,400 buildings were destroyed in the fire. No one knows exactly what or who caused the fire, but high winds and dry weather helped the fire grow. Damage will cost the government $9,000,000,000 making it the most expensive natural disaster in Canadian history. There were zero injuries, zero direct fatalities, and two indirect fatalities caused by this fire.Now that I’ve told you a bit about the fire and damage let me tell you some of the good things.

Positives

This fire brought our amazing country together. For example this only started May first and already the red cross alone has collected over $100,000,000 in donations for these people that lost everything to the fire. It’s not only the red cross collecting money. People just about everywhere are raising money including girl scouts, people in British Columbia who have donated $384,000, a bunch of websites all over the internet, and many many more places. People even have enough trust to let the victims of this fire into their homes. Lots of natural disasters happen everywhere and all over the world, but not always does the disaster bring a whole country together like how this small town brought Canada together, or even other countries together too like how 300 African firefighters came over to Canada for only $15 a day to help us put out the fire during this time of need. Only Canada can enforce strong relationships like this which makes Canada special. This was just a reminder.

Another reason is that it’s actually good for the environment. You see after a few years soil gets old and loses nutrients so the trees and plants don’t grow so well. When there’s a forest fire it renews the soil and forces all the minerals up so it’s rich and full of nutrients and minerals. This means the trees can grow back bigger and better than they ever were even before the fire. Even the aboriginals  hundreds of years ago would light where they lived on fire when they left so when the next tribe would come to live there, they would have good soil to grow crops and feed their tribe.

This fire was also a good test for emergency services.  I think we handled it okay but there’s always room to improve. This showed us the areas we were weak in like putting out the fire quick. Now we know we can improve that for next time(which is hopefully in a very long time from now). This also shows us the good things that we handled well and we should keep the same like the evacuation and getting everyone away from danger. Knowing this information is extremely important because it all goes into improving Emergency Services for future emergencies so they can be handled better than the previous one. So this tragedy helped improve emergency services and problems in the future so none of them are as bad as this one.

One Last Reason is that forest fires benefit the forest in many different ways like killing diseases and bugs that are a threat to the forest’s trees. Forest fires also help some species of trees like the jack pine let off their seeds to carry on their generations. Trees like the jack pine have fireproof bark but need the help of fire to release the seeds from the bark. This means small forest fire is mandatory every 3-25 years. That way more and more trees can grow to make the forests larger and larger as a habitat for animals and lumber for us! Fires also kill diseases and insects that are harmful to the forest. Once a disease got into all the trees in my neighborhood so people had to cut every single tree there down. Now no one has to cut down any trees in the forest thanks to this fire. In conclusion, without forest fires there wouldn’t be many big forests or even any forests at all.

Hopefully I convinced you that the fire wasn’t 100% bad and with all the fire’s disadvantages comes some positive impact as well. Now I will tell you some ways we can prevent future fires.

Preventing a Fire

You may or may not know this but over the past few years the Forest Resource Improvement Association of Alberta (FRIAA) has collected $23,600,000 in donations but has only spent $6,900,000. They could use the remaining $16,700,000 towards hiring more firefighters, purchasing more fire engines and tools, etc. so nothing like this ever happens again. Also highly trained professionals should start small and highly controlled fires more often to get rid of any underbrush that would add to the fire and help it travel. Then of course they would put out the fire when they’re done.

Recovery

Many Fort McMurray residents returned home from the evacuation on June 1st to June 4th, but there are some people that still can’t return and have left people wondering if they’ll ever be able to return. Some people like the first nations people and churches nice enough to open up their doors to these unfortunate people. The evacuees also got money from the government. The government has been doing everything they can towards putting out hotspots, cleaning up, and rebuilding the town. After all this, only 15% of the town was burned, 85% is still standing, no direct deaths, and a load of benefits. Maybe this fire wasn’t as bad as everybody thinks it was.