Over 100 km in diameter burned to the ground. A whole Fort Murray . Over 88000 people evacuated.

http://globalnews.ca/tag/fort-mcmurray-wildfire/

There are too many pictures , just google it if you are interested.
My first cousin lives and works there. Just moved to his new house 6 months ago..Burned the the ground.

If you recall, it wasn't too many years ago when the US Forest Service was doing controlled burns to prevent wildfires. Unfortunately, some of the controlled burns got out of hand and became the wildfires they were intended to prevent.

Gary

Sorry to hear about your cousin and his house. I hope no one got hurt, including the rest of the evacuees.

Thanks Mike. There is no casualties so far. The whole city was evacuated. Over 88000 people. Over 100 km radius was burned. The whole city is in ashes.
My cousin and his family are relocated . I don't know how much they show it in news in US or even in Quebec.

There has been quite a bit of coverage in the U.S. Our thoughts and prayers are with the displaced people.

Very sad. Is there any kind of victim relief fund or something we can contribute to? I couldn't find anything on Google.

chas

I heard they have saved downtown Fort McMurray so far, but the utility infrastructure (water, electricity) is completely gone.
I remember I was staying in a forest lodge in Spearfish, South Dakota, in the Black Hills in 1988 when the fire took large parts of the Black Hills (and also Yellowstone etc.) during a drought. We even smelled the fire, but luckily it didn't get to the northern slope of the Black Hills... (it was the lodge of Mr. Meier who owned the Black Hills Passion Play, my classmate was related to him).

Thanks for the update. Thank God there are no casualties.

As far as the news goes, I try not to watch too much news, but it's talked about pretty much everywhere.

I just saw in the German news that Fort Murray is far less destroyed than expected, and that they could save 90% of the buildings! I hope that news was correct.

As much as I can see on the net there were 2 casualties. Thanks to firemen a lot of infrastructure was saved too. I talked to my cousin and he told me there are 2400 homes burned to the ground.
They still don't know when people will be returning to the city.