Journal Of Commerce - FMCA details Wood Buffalo wildfire response http://journalofcommerce.com/Resource/News/2016/5/FMCA-details-W...

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by label: Richard Gilbert May 5, 2016

Members of the Fort McMurray Construction Association (FMCA) are working in partnership with the Regional Municipality of Wood Buffalo (RMWB) to help fight a huge wildfire in the city, which could be the costliest natural disaster in Canadian history.

"We have been really busy with the coordination of our contractors in the effort to help out with the fires, as well as making sure our membership is taken care of," said FMCA President Charles Iggulden.

"We are helping the municipality make entries into a registry to make sure our membership knows where to go and the municipality knows what resources are available to them. Some of our members are working and helping out with Cats (construction equipment) and water trucks, but I don't know how Photo: JASON WOODHEAD many of our members are involved and who they are right now."

The government has declared state of emergency for the RMWB as a wildfire in Fort McMurray continues to burn out of control. Mandatory evacuation orders which began on May 3 are in place for Fort McMurray, Anzac, Gregoire Lake Estates, Fort McMurray First Nation and Mackenzie County near High Level. The mandatory evacuation order remains in effect and affects at least 80,000 people.

Iggulden and other members of the FMCA were also evacuated out of Fort McMurray on May 3. As a result, Iggulden has been running the FMCA and coordinating contractors out of a field office in Bruderheim, which is a town in the Capital Region.

"The biggest thing is coordinating the activities of contractors and everybody is being helpful, but donations need to go through the proper sources like the Red Cross and designated collection points," said Iggulden. "Some of the people have lost their homes and people are being very generous. But, they need to go through the distribution points, so they can take inventory and distribute items to the right people. We can honestly say it is overwhelming the great support we have got from the four western provinces to help us out."

The raging wildfire had destroyed more than 1,600 homes and buildings by May 4 with another 19,000 potentially under threat. The fire forced the emergency response team to 1 of 3 2016-05-11 11:52 AM Journal Of Commerce - FMCA details Wood Buffalo wildfire response http://journalofcommerce.com/Resource/News/2016/5/FMCA-details-W...

move its headquarters to a new location, 30 kilometres to the south.

More than 1,110 firefighters, 145 helicopters, 138 pieces of heavy equipment and 22 air tankers are fighting the fires.

"In terms of reconstruction, we are working with Alberta Infrastructure and UDI (Urban Development Institute) to start laying the groundwork for the long-term plan moving forward," said Iggulden.

According to research by Bank of Montreal Capital Markets, the wildfire in Fort McMurray could cost insurers as much as C$9 billion, which would make it the costliest natural disaster in Canadian history.

BMO Capital Markets analyst Tom MacKinnon said that figure was a worst-case scenario based on a comparison to a wildfire in Slave Lake, Alberta in 2011.

Slave Lake Alberta suffered substantial losses on May 15, 2011 after a wildfire fire destroyed 40 per cent of the town. The fire completely destroyed 433 of the town's buildings and damaged another 96.

The bill for insurers for the Slave Lake fire was C$700 million and the Fort McMurray fire is bigger and the properties more valuable.

The Town of Slave Lake had a population at the time of roughly 7,000, compared to Fort McMurray's 80,000 people.

MacKinnon said a more reasonable estimate might be for total industry losses of between C$2.6 billion and C$4.7 billion, still by far the largest potential catastrophe loss in Canadian history.

May 5, 2016

Fort McMurray, construction associations, fire, resource

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