It sounds like Canada is metaphorically and literally playing with fire by turning down help because of the logistical problems. They got help fighting fires from Mexico, the US, Australia, NZ and south Africa last year [1]

Here's some comparisons to the numbers in the article you linked to: Canada: 700 firefighters, several choppers, 27 air tankers and 46 pieces of heavy equipment deployed to fight 500,000+ hectare wildfire that has destroyed 2000+ buildings.

In Australia, 2013: 2000 firefighters, 90 aircraft, 200 fire engines were deployed to fight a 118,000 hectares fire that cost ~US$50 million and destroyed 250 buildings

Many of the firefighters in Australia (and in the southern hemisphere) are idle at the moment as it's heading into winter. It's very weird that Canada turned down help when so much property is on the line.

Source http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-08-02/australian-firefighter...

The numbers of firefighters in the area that you quoted is incorrect. Currently there are 2,146 firefighters and support staff, 80 helicopters and 219 pieces of heavy equipment battling this fire.

Source http://www.alberta.ca/release.cfm?xID=41701E7ECBE35-AD48-579...

there is not really any property on the line. The fire burned three neighbourhoods in Ft McMurray the first day, when it surprised everybody and residents were evacuating through the flames. The next week or so saw significant urban firefighting work to protect the rest of the city and a lot of urban firefighters from around alberta went up to help. Since then, when all the offers of aid from other countries have been coming in, the fire has left town and is mostly just burning up remote forest.

We turned down the help because it wouldn't have done any good. The fire was too large for people to put out. Only rain can kill it now.

Believe me, we didn't turn down help out of pride. We have a ton of experience dealing with these things. We know when a fire is fightable, and when it isn't.

I love how everyone else is just inventing shit about foreign policy. Folks y'all can talk good about hacking but it doesn't mean your armchair intuition is right about specialized issues in other countries

At any given point in any given summer, a large chunk of the country is on fire. That's the reality of having a massive landmass covered in boreal forest. The consequence of that is that we have a well funded, professional forest fire service that is among the best in the world at what they do.

If accepting American or Russian help would have helped save Canadian homes and businesses, we would have. The South Africans are here for diplomatic reasons more than anything, and they arrived long after the critical period when we were trying to protect property and lives.

This isn't the California wildfires. It's not threatening populated areas anymore. It's burning in a vast expanse of unpopulated subarctic forest. It's fine. The damage is done; now we wait for it to burn out while keeping an eye out for the next one.

> The South Africans are here for diplomatic reasons more than anything

So it's just a Trudeau-like "diversity" hire or something? Not to say that in a mean way, just that they are not the most qualified and have only received minimal training.

I suppose it wouldn't be so bad if it wasn't being praised as "South African government sees it as repaying a debt to the Canadian people for their support for the anti-apartheid struggle"[1]. Let's just call it an aid program and be done?

1: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/300-south-afric...

Yeah, they need experience and training, so they're here to get it.

They're also getting paid for it. I'm not against it, just annoyed how it's being published. The real story is "Canada gives South Africa over $2M, trains firefighters". Not "South Africa helps out Canada; pays back apartheid debt". It's shameful to spin it like that.

I for one am very grateful they are here to help. Should be a clear win for both sides.

Talk about experience. That's got to be crazy for them.

> So it's just a Trudeau-like "diversity" hire or something?

Are you implying that they're all black because they're from South Africa?

Why wouldn't they be "diverse" (as in different) if they were white SAs? Though every picture and video seems to imply there's probably few to zero white firefighters that came over. But that might just be selective photography. (To be fair the pictures don't seem to show any women either, but the official number is around 60, or slightly greater than 20%.)

>If accepting American or Russian help would have helped save Canadian homes and businesses, we would have

How do you know this? Because the actual firefighters wanted more planes. The prime minster, who knows nothing about fire fighting is the one who rejected the help. Note that this has been an especially dry, hot season with far more wildfires than usual. And despite this, the provincial government cancelled the deal that they had to get more planes. The firefighters were up in arms over this. And that's before the Fort Mac fire happened.

Out of curiosity do you really think the prime minister just made a decision to reject help without consulting other people in the field?

No, and I suggested nothing of the sort.

"This isn't the California wildfires. It's not threatening populated areas anymore. It's burning in a vast expanse of unpopulated subarctic forest. It's fine. The damage is done; now we wait for it to burn out while keeping an eye out for the next one."

I hate this notion that wildlife and nature isn't important. Apparently only human lives and materialistic objects matter....

Over the decades they learned that fighting wild fires is counter-productive. What's left is fighting only fires that endanger humans and human structures and leave the wild ones alone. It's the product of many decades of experience! Which is missing in your statement (the experience), that tries to make this into some weird metaphysical issue.

Just an example: http://www.washington.edu/news/2015/09/17/scientists-let-wil...

Did you know that the earth has a history of 400 million years without humans fighting wildfires? (No big plants before the Devonian period.)

Fires are natural events and are part of the process that made our environment what it is. I recently visited Yosemite park and the giant sequoias, and it was explained that during the last 100 years or so there hadn't been any fires in the sequoias area because, to protect them, all fires were extinguished.

Then it turned out that fires are actually beneficial to sequoias reproduction, because they create an environment that is better suited to giant sequoias than the other kinds of trees. So, protecting them from fire was actually damaging their future...

The northern forests of Canada are a large part Jack Pine, which require fire to open their seed cones and reproduce.

Nature takes care of itself. Constantly putting out fires just ensures the next one is even bigger...

Yup, the PM is listening to the informed experience of the guys on the ground who have been doing it for decades. They are handling it correctly.

In many cases, it's not about putting the fire out when they become large. It's about containment, control and mitigation, which (competent) people are able to do.

Turning help from Russia was stupid they actually got allot of experience the great northern forests of Russia are probably the closest environment to Canada and if they go a blaze it can cause an extinction level event on a planetary scale so they are actually well prepared for that at least as well as anyone can be. They even have reportedly tested killing forest fires with nukes if a Siberian tundra fire goes out of control.

I guess Russia is still unpopular on HN.

Russia has allot of experience with wildfires it has the largest and densest northern forests in the world combined with a permafrost that holds insane amount of methane and other carbohydrates.

Climate change and forest fires are huge national security issue to Russia and if they go out of control it can cause horrible damage to Russia and even then entire planet as it can cause a Permian extinction style event which happened before when the Siberian carbon traps went up in flames. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permian%E2%80%93Triassic_extin...

Russia has been dealing with huge wild fires every several years https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015_Russian_wildfires https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_Russian_wildfires

They are one of the few countries that designs and builds dedicated firefighting aircraft designed to combat large forest fires. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beriev_Be-200 And while they might be arseholes on the political scene otherwise every time there is a large scale fire they do extend their hand and come in with serious help.

Canada already has a reciprocal firefighting agreement with America, so if we need external help, we have it.

Inviting a totally foreign country in which you're in a) fighting a proxy war with in yet another part of the world; and b) fighting a passive battle for northern sovereignty/control with seems like an incredibly stupid idea.

Canada has many forest fires on the go every year and are generally only worth fighting when they threaten communities. Forests are meant to burn. I have friends who work in emergency fire fighting in Saskatchewan and they have not been deployed to the Northern fires because it is not the problem the media is making it out to be!

Some forest are meant to burn yes, the problem is that with climate change forest fire now burn further north and for much longer than before.

Drought conditions and the heat traps that are cities prevent proper rainfall which stops them and changes we've made to the landscape can prevent burn outs which also make fires last longer.

And more importantly while forest fires are natural it doesn't mean it's good, we had at least one fire related extinction event, and even considerably smaller scale fires can be disastrous to humans so while it's true that to some extent the policy is let it burn in this case it's not longer really the case.

And while I would also agree that Canada is in a political muck with Russia it doesn't make sense to deny their help, Israel accepted Turkey's help to combat forest fire when their relationship was arguably at the lowest point shortly after the flotilla incident. Governments should know when it's a good time to put a halt to their differences and emergencies are as good as an excuse as any.

P.S. With forests being natural carbon traps climate change is now just as important factor as threat to communities and livelihood with the amount of CO2 were putting into the atmosphere we might not be able to longer afford for forest fires to take their natural course if we actually want to start reversing some of the changes we've made. This isn't some clear cut case, and in this case it seems that Canada does take help from certain countries but for some reason refrains taking it from others and in such cases politics should really be the last thing on your mind.

Yes, you might have a big argument with your siblings, be very angry at them, and if they still got into a car crash you're still going to be at the hospital with them. There may be political differences but we're all human beings here.

The problem with accepting any kind of help from Russia is that the Russian government is single-mindedly focused on geopolitical leverage. It does nothing out of the kindness of heart. Every offer of assistance, every interaction with a foreign government is a calculated maneuver. No thanks.

You make it sound that it's not the deal with every other country in the world.

Let's compare the number of countries that Russia has subjected to energy blackmail to that of literally any other country, for starters.

To make it more interesting, can we compare the list of counties that Russia has blackmailed to a list of countries other big countries have blackmailed? The west won't look so pretty then.

This holds for pretty much every government.

> And while they might be arseholes on the political scene otherwise every time there is a large scale fire they do extend their hand and come in with serious help.

It's difficult to top the US in terms of foreign policy assholery though.

Indeed but for most of the HN readers US foreign policy more or less aligns with their interests. In general talking about politics on HN isn't a good idea, mentioning ideas that the current conflict with Russia is largely in part due to the EU and NATO expansion is even more so. While I don't like what Russia is doing in the Ukraine and in many other parts of the world I can hardly blame them as they are living the nightmare scenario of being the largest landlocked country in the world. They've lost the post cold war "buffer" to the EU, they are at risk of losing the control over the gas and oil pipelines from the Middle East into Europe, and they are encircled by NATO. If Canada and Mexico would've joined the Warsaw Pact the US would've nuked Moscow.

Yeah, HN users, in general, have a very jingoistic point of view despite whatever progressive leanings they may have.

> a permafrost that holds insane amount of methane and other carbohydrates.

I never had this thought until now, but the things you eat are called carbohydrates whilst the things you burn are called hydrocarbons.

Carbohydrates like Glucose contain Carbon, Hydrogen and Oxygen (C6H12O6). Hydrocarbons like Methane contain only Carbon and Hydrogen (CH4).

I take your point, but do we not say that ethanol powered cars run on hydrocarbons?

You are correct sir! :D Never drink and post

Here are the criteria for rating the risk of wildfires in Alberta http://wildfire.alberta.ca/fire-smart-landscapes/wildfire-th...

The fire presented a risk right at the beginning and seemed to spread into populated area's faster than could be responded to, once that risk was no longer present outside assistance was not required.

Turning down Russia I can (sort of?) understand. The last conservative government was keen on playing hardball with the Kremlin over Arctic sovereignty - seems there's no reason to back off that stance now.

Turning down American help was strange though. I'd like an explanation for that..

Not only did they turn down american help, they haven't even called on the Canadian military yet - apart from a few aerial imaging assets, they're still just on standby. It's pretty silly to call on external firefighting assets when we still haven't expended our domestic resources yet.

Apart from Fort McMurray (which is now pretty safe) it's a mostly unpopulated area, and fire is a great natural renewal process in a boreal forest. Letting it burn for a while longer and just trying to keep guiding it away from anything valuable with minimal resources is a valid strategy.

They didn't turn down American help, there's 200 US firefighters there right now.

Source - http://www.alberta.ca/release.cfm?xID=41701E7ECBE35-AD48-579...

Canada and Russia recently got into a pissing match over another Russia space craft coming down near. http://news.nationalpost.com/news/canada/canada-says-it-didn...

Actually our airspace was saturated. We had more aircraft ourselves we could have put up but it would have been unsafe to do so.

Really? The fire is over 1000 square km, and there's only like 30 aircraft, right? Plus SA isn't contributing aircraft, only people that have gone through a 10-day "boot camp".

It seems very weird that Russia and the US have nothing to contribute, but inexperienced folks from SA do.

With a wildfire there's no point in fighting 99% of it - you fight the edges that are near people/property, try to contain it, and wait for rain and for it to run out of fuel. So of a 1000 sq km fire it may only be a few dozen linear kilometers that are being actively fought.

This is the correct answer.

From a forestry management perspective, you don't want the forest to live forever, and trying to prevent old, dead trees from burning is a nightmare. Let the fire burn, protect the property, and the forest will reseed itself during the fire.

By the time Russia came along, much of the populated area's were out of harms way. Adding more aircraft that are all using 1 or 2 airports is just more congestion.

An advantage of all Soviet-era planes is they can use any crappy airfield without breaking a sweat.

Russian firefighting aircraft are sea planes they are designed to land in a lake or in littoral waters to take on water they've been very successful at fighting fires in Greece and Israel with using the med as their water supply.

They don't land just anywhere, plus you need a tower to coordinate them, and Ft. Mac is hardly a bustling metropolis.

No it was not, please don't repeat made up excuses for bad political decisions.

I suspect Canada's prime concern was the very high carbon footprint of firefighters from USA and Russia.

You're kidding right? This wildfire isn't doing anything to help Canada's carbon footprint.

I think/hope he was being sarcastic.

I am not sure why learned members of HN don't get sarcasm.

But anecdotally Trudeau was worried about carbon footprints from a camp fire he once attended, but these wildfires don't bother him.

Poe's law.

I've seen far too many (AFAICT) absolutely sincerely intended idiotic statements here. I mostly simply let them fly. xkcd 386 only gets you so far.

Adding a </s> tag to your comment helps.

I don't think </s> is necessary one your rely on his/her own human intelligence.

Evidence suggests otherwise. Which is precisely what Poe's Law is about.

because you can't trust assuming sarcasm on this site.

People come to HN to feel smart, and to discuss things that make them feel smart. Things nobody else in their house understands, like JSON and Node.js and jQuery.

They don't feel smart when they can't tell if you're being facetious or literal.

It's pervasive aspergers. Generally people don't appreciate humour here, which is sad, but for the reason above, that many here find conversational implicature hard, and prefer clear, logical steps.

I know you are being sarcastic, but this may have a grain of truth (not the concern but the concept itself)

Eventually these trees will die and rot/burn anyway, but new ones will grow and recover near equivalent carbon. Trees just hold carbon temporarily.(Underground gas is another story though)

If you burn oil from deep underground, that carbon would never have escaped without human intervention.