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By any empirical measure, this particular expedition had been a kind of Charge of the Light Brigade; a heroic and taxing journey of dubious utility. But the members were undaunted, by Saturday afternoon they were organizing a massive shipment of medical supplies to firefighters, and by Sunday were back to marshalling an ever-expanding network of drivers and supplies dropped off at the North Edmonton garage acting as their muster point.

Among the more pragmatic Fort McMurray evacuees waiting their turn on Saturday for an escort south, there was a sentiment that, in the worst way possible, a lot of the city’s recent economic troubles have just been solved.

Oil prices are up. Reconstruction work will bring jobs back to the city. The freefall in housing prices has been stemmed by the simple fact that there aren’t as many houses anymore. Even local hotels have seen share prices jump.

But for now, it’s little comfort to the people nursing 1000-mile stares at evacuee centres throughout Alberta.

Forest fire evacuations are usually orderly affairs. The air quality drops below a certain point, and community members are calmly asked to pack their bags and clear out as a precaution.

But as the carved-up highway medians around Fort McMurray attest, this was a city of people fleeing for their lives.

At points along Highway 63, the gap between tree lines can be as much as 100 metres apart. In Tuesday’s high winds, fire breaks like these had been little more than a speed bump. Paul, an oil sands worker who joined our rescue convoy, had been among those fleeing south.

He’d been stuck in slow moving traffic as flames coursed overtop his car, and his passengers leaned away from the windows to get away from the heat.

It is a common frustration among emergency workers that homeowners in the path of a forest fire will refuse to evacuate because they believe they can fend off the approaching flames with a few sprinklers and a garden hose.

Nobody in Fort McMurray believes that anymore.

National Post

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