May 4, 2016

A Massive Wildfire in Canada Just Forced an Entire City to Be Evacuated

“Everything I’ve ever known is burnt to the ground.”

Mary Anne Sexsmith-Segato/The Canadian Press/AP


A massive wildfire has devastated the oil town of Fort McMurray, Alberta, where overnight on Tuesday, the city’s entire population of 80,000 residents were ordered to evacuate. The wildfire, which started over the weekend, has already burned more than 74,000 acres. In one neighborhood, 80 percent of the homes were reported destroyed.

The Toronto Star reports officials are seeking help form the Canadian military to assist in controlling the crisis, with high temperatures and clouds of smoke continuing to envelop the region. As firefighters struggled to contain the fire on Wednesday, fire chief Darby Allen indicated that powerful winds still threatened to exacerbate the situation.

“I would say it’s been the worst day of my career,” Allen told CBC Ottawa. “The people here are devastated, everyone’s devastated, the community is going to be devastated. This is going to take us awhile to come back from, but we’ll come back.”

“It’s a nasty, ugly fire and it is not showing any forgiveness,” he added.

On social media, residents fleeing the area reported scenes of chaos:

On Wednesday, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau offered to provide Fort McMurray with federal assistance, pledging to support residents through the crisis.

“I really do want to highlight that Canada is a country where we look out for our neighbors and we are there for each other in difficult times,” Trudeau said. “And certainly in Fort McMurray, the difficult times they are going through right now is something that we are going to unite around.”

As Climate Central explains, the Fort McMurray fire is “the latest in a lengthening lineage of early wildfires in the northern reaches of the globe that are indicative of a changing climate. As the planet continues to warm, these types of fires will likely only become more common and intense as spring snowpack disappears and temperatures warm.”

Click below to watch Climate Desk’s video explaining the link between climate change and wildfires:

More Mother Jones reporting on Climate Desk

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

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