Province releases reviews on handling of Ft. McMurray wildfire

Province releases Ft. McMurray wildfire reviews The Alberta government has released two reviews on the Fort McMurray wildfire.

The Alberta government released two reviews Thursday that were focused on how officials handled the massive wildfire that hit Fort McMurray in May, 2016.

The reviews were released to the public Thursday just after 7 p.m.

The two independent reviews, carried out by KPMG and MNP, were released to the public along with news from the province that the Alberta Government had accepted a total of 31 recommendations that were included in the reports.

The report from MNP was handed over to the Alberta government in March, 2017; the second report was handed over to the province in May, 2017.

The MNP report, entitled A Review of the 2016 Horse River Wildfire, was commissioned by Alberta Agriculture and Forestry on conditions leading up to the fire, on preparedness before the fire, and to evaluate the department’s response.

That report included ten recommendations.

KPMG’s report, called the Post-Incident Assessment Report, was prepared for the Alberta Emergency Management Agency, and it included 21 recommendations.

In part, the report stated in the early days of the fire, two crews battling the fires were working through different command centres, and communications broke down when a crew chief realized the massive blaze would breach Fort McMurray, but didn’t tell crews in the Regional Municipality of Wood Buffalo – the municipality learned the fire was coming through social media.

The province said commissioning such reviews are standard practice after major disasters, the province said all of the recommendations had been accepted, and were being implemented. That included putting $45 million to FireSmart funding to help Alberta communities with wildfire prevention and protection activities, update wildfire protection laws, improve how fire weather is forecasted, making air-traffic control protocols that were developed in Fort McMurray a new standard, and investing in a new provincial operations centre.

The fire started on May 1, 2016, just outside of Fort McMurray, in the following days the blaze grew to threaten Fort McMurray, and surrounding communities.

That fire forced the evacuation of nearly 88,000 people from the area – it caused billions of dollars in damage.

With files from The Canadian Press