re: Major wildfire incident at CFB Wainwright, Alberta. 150+ injured w/ fatalities

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quote: i'm seeing closer to 500 Good thing they have world class health care.

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On the bright side none of them will be facing a lifetime of dealing with collection agencies.

Carney is giving a press briefing now.

He said "4 dead (and have had their next of kin notified)". He stressed that second part. "Dozens more wonded".

Will have a briefing later today from response and investigation effort leaders on the ground.

I don't know this guy, but this seems at least plausible:

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I want to update my original post which was based on another post that laid out the scenario & location of the incident.

I accepted the scenario & questioned the location. In fact I’ve now received a great deal of new information from soldiers who were there & want to correct the record.

So here’s what I know: the location is correct, the scenario (an artillery round caused the explosion) was totally wrong.

Soldiers on the ground are saying 2 training scenarios were happening in that location simultaneously.

First there is lots of static ranges that face the second lake from rifle ranges to a 60 mm mortar range to a grenade range to an antitank range limited to the M72 & 84 mm Carl Gustov. These hand held shoulder fired anti armour weapons have been used by CDN infantry platoons for 4 decades now. They are generally very effective & reliable.

I’m told a Carl G was being fired at a target some 300 metres away from a static cement bay using the standing position. The safety officer stands about 18” away in a cement bay observing every action taken by the loader & gunner. This is very basic infantry training & carried out at least annually.

In this case a high explosive (HE) round was being fired.

Apparently shortly after the HE round was fired it malfunctioned & dove at full speed into the ground striking either a buried natural gas wellhead or pipeline which exploded. There were casualties at this range caused by the blast wave.

Simultaneously there were some 150 soldiers training in fighting in built up areas (FIBUA or Urban Warfare) using blank ammo or just running through the basic drills using dry fire. No live ammunition, no explosives of any type, certainly no live indirect fire. There were 3 wooden structures being used & all three were completely destroyed by the blast. A significant number of casualties occurred here.

The explosion led to a grass fire which was whipped up by strong gusts of wind which blew directly through the units bivouac site (tented area where troops sleep, rest, park vehicles etc) casing additional casualties. The fire then continued on & went beyond the training area into the municipality of Wainwright.

At this point, it appears that this series of incidents began with a round malfunctioning & doing damage that never could have been imagined let alone predicted or prevented.

As was the case last night, the fog of war/crisis still exists so information may still change.

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The rest of his post not regarding the particulars of the incident:

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This is not because of a cover up or some imaginary conspiracy.

If the casualty count is only half as high as some are claiming you will have to go back to the darkest days of WWII to find similar numbers & never has a training exercise seen anything like this so a great deal must be done in the immediate aftermath before making definitive public statements so please have patience, please believe everyone is trying to get this right & those who really care are more than willing to correct their earlier errors as the newest information comes in.

Think long & hard about what you post…thousand of soldiers & their families are watching! Please keep them all including the military & civilian first responders in your prayers.

I hope this helps & I’ll potentially post more as it becomes available.

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I didn’t know Canada had a military, I thought we protected them.

There is talk now that satellite heat signatures were picked up prior to the suspected timing of the explosion. Every pass and image from the satellite(s) is/are timestamped, so it shouldn't be too terribly difficult to verify, though I haven't personally tried to.

Also, some images of maps with the satellite heat signatures overlaid are going around. The maps show the locations of natural gas pipelines and wells in the CFB Wainwright area. If the map and the overlay are correct, there are no pipelines or wells in the immediate live fire training area.

If we assume that the above is all correct (admittedly a weak assumption at this point), it could mean that a fire was sparked by some type of live ammo, and that fire rapidly spread under the high winds. Grass fires can spread at incredibly fast rates. It would be plausible, then, that the advancing fire reached and overan an ammo storage area or similar structure which caused the explosion. This would flip the time line of the incident entirely.

Canadian authorities just released info regarding the personel responsible for authorizing live munition training on top of an active natural gas operation

LINK

Per the press conference that just happened:

- 4 confirmed fatalities
- 39 are being treated at various hospitals
- 19 of those patients are in critical condition
- There were multiple training missions going on simultaneously

- A grass fire was ignited during normal training operations
- That fire began to spread quickly under very high winds crossing multiple firebreaks and made its way to land outside of the base
- The fire quickly spread to the artillery training command area where many of the injuries occurred
- No large gas-related explosions or explosions related to outside interference (sounds like ammo related explosions could still be possible)
- The cause of the fire is still under investigation
- All people are accounted for and hospitals have returned to normal operations from their "Level Orange" mass casualty protocol
- The four killed include three privates and one sergeant

Is it a coincidence that this happens the day before an independence referendum vote?

Canada has CSAR technicians roughly comparable to USAF Pararescue

The highest wind gust I've seen now is 51mph at 3:16pm. This was out of the west as the wind was shifting with the frontal passage. Within the hour the wind would be entirely out of the WNW with continued gusts into the 30s and 40s.

What is complicating matters right now are the very early reports from officials that the "fire ignited in the training area at around 4pm". That was very early on, and appears to be the jumping off point for a lot of X/social media "reports" that followed.

We now know — via comments from officials and actual satellite imagery — that a grass fire was burning northwest of the training area early in the day prior to the start of the training exercises. At that time the fire was being "watched", and the prevailing wind was not a threat to the training grounds. The wind shift and increase changed that.

What I have not been able to find are direct quotes from the people of the town of Wainwright (the people on base won't be talking any time soon) of a noticeable or notable "explosion". If a large explosion, one beyond the norm for the live fire training that was going on, had occurred it would have been heard in and around the town. I'm not saying one didn't occur, just that no one has been quoted in media reports as having heard or observed one. I'm sure there are Xwitter "reports", but we know how that goes.