More on the Halifax Fire

After making the last post I decided to head to Point Pleasant Park to see if I could get a better sense of exactly where the fire CBC was reporting on was, and how large it was.

Almost as soon as I started upon my trip I was able to see that the fire was certainly pumping out a fair bit of smoke. Actually, given what I know now what I thought were clouds were actually likely smoke from the fire. As you could likely figured out on your own, all of the dark stuff behind the grocery store is smoke.



As I continued towards the park the smoke from the fire continued to be visible, and that the source was across from the park became clearer. From the Young Avenue railroad bridge the smoke is visible.



Obviously once I was in the park and on the trails I had an even better view of the source of the smoke.



As I was approaching the beach I happened to run into two friends who had been on the beach watching the progression of things. They suggested that where I was planning on heading was a great place to get a sense of things. They were hoping that I might be able to provide them with a little more information on the source of the fire. Unfortunately, I didn't really have much more information than they did, though I had heard that at least a few houses had been lost.

As soon as I made it to the beach it was clear that there seemed to be at least two fires. One of the fires was directly across the water from the park. This fire appeared to be behind the a ridge, so the flames were not visible.

A second, larger, fire appeared to be further south. Again, this fire also appeared to be behind a ridge.

















I spent a few minutes on the beach watching the progression of things. One of the most noticeable thing was that there appeared to be a number of planes and helicopters flying around. Some of these were clearly being used as water bombers, others I presume were surveying the fire (and I suspect some may have been removing people given that they kept going up an down).









By the time I left it seemed that the fire directly across from me had either been controlled, or had started to burn itself out as there was much less smoke than when I arrived.

The second, larger, fire seemed to still be pumping out a fair bit of smoke and was receiving the most attention from the helicopters.

All in all, this is quite the fire and disaster. I really hope that they were able to evacuate everyone in time.

I thought I should also point out that when I was in Point Pleasant Park earlier this afternoon this is what the view looked like.