by Larry Powell
It's been described as the worst tragedy involving Canadian forces personnel on home soil in peacetime. Four service members died and 39 were injured (19 critically) in a raging grass fire on the training range at CFB wainwright, southeast of Edmonton last Saturday. According to a military spokesperson, the fire, fuelled by 80k/hr winds, changed direction and overtook them, moving at an astonishing rate of about one kilometre in 30 seconds.
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A photographic comparison of Battle River (north of Wainwright) on June 6 (left) and September 23 (right), 2026. |
Wainwright and the surrounding Municipal District have faced dry conditions this year. Two watersheds there have remained under water shortage advisories due to low flow conditions and declining soil moisture amid limited late-summer rainfall.
These conditions are not unlike ones that prevailed when wildfires destroyed much of Jasper, Slave Lake and Fort MacMurray, also in the province of Alberta in years past.
But it's unlikely we'll ever hear either our Prime Minister or Alberta's Premier admit that manmade climate change has played a hand in this. They simply have too much invested in a petro-based future to ever admit it.
To do so would surely be nothing short of a confession that disasters like this will only happen more often.