Fort McMurray
| Fort McMurray | |||
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 Aerial view of Fort McMurray |
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| Location in Alberta | |||
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| State : |
 Canada
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| Province : | Alberta | ||
| Regional Municipality: | Wood Buffalo | ||
| Coordinates : | 56 ° 44 ′ N , 111 ° 23 ′ W | ||
| Height : | 370 m | ||
| Area : | 35 km² | ||
| Residents : | 61,374 (as of 2011) | ||
| Population density : | 1,753.5 inhabitants / km² | ||
| Time zone : | Mountain Time ( UTC − 7 ) | ||
| Postal code : | T9H - T9K | ||
| Foundation : | 1870 | ||
Fort McMurray is a dependent parish in the northeastern part of Canada 's Alberta province . The city is located in the Northern Alberta region and is part of the Wood Buffalo parish .
geography
location
Fort McMurray is 435 km northeast of the provincial capital Edmonton , just under 60 km west of the border with the province of Saskatchewan , surrounded by boreal coniferous forest at the confluence of the Clearwater River and the Athabasca River . The region is characterized by the occurrence of Athabasca oil sands (tar sands) at an average depth of 30 meters, which contain between one and 18 percent bitumen .
climate
The average temperature is −19.8 ° C in January and +16.6 ° C in July. The total precipitation per year is 334.5 mm, the annual snowfall is 172.0 cm. The total amount of sunshine per year is 2,108 hours on a long-term annual average.
history
Before the colonization by white fur traders in the late 18th century, Cree lived in the area around what is now Fort McMurray. The settlement was founded in 1870 as a waypost for the Hudson's Bay Company . The Alberta and Great Waterways Railway linked the settlement to the railway network in 1915, adding to the existing steamboat traffic on the Athabasca River. In 1947 Fort McMurray was merged with the Waterways community; the part of the name Fort was dropped until 1962.
In 1980 the community was elevated to a city; In 1981, due to the oil sands boom, it already had 31,000 inhabitants (1971: approx. 7,000). As a result, it was a center of oil sands and gas production in Alberta and important pipeline station to a typical boomtown . Many people immigrated from Newfoundland and other eastern Canadian provinces. In 1996 Fort McMurray was merged with the neighboring districts to form the Municipality of Wood Buffalo (2016: approx. 125,000 inhabitants); since then there is no longer an independent city under the name Fort McMurray.
Demographics
While the number of inhabitants developed only slowly until the 1970s, a sharp increase in population began with the start of oil sands extraction. As a result, the city has experienced a tremendous boom in recent years. Within ten years the population has grown from 33,078 in 1996 to 47,705 in 2006, i.e. by almost 50%. In 2011 the number of inhabitants rose again by 28.7% to 61,374 inhabitants. In 2011, more than 93% of the county's population lived in Fort McMurray.
In the vicinity of Fort McMurray are several smaller reservations with an area of 31 square kilometers for about 750 members of the First Nations of the Woodland Cree and Athabasca Chipewyan . They jointly manage the area as Fort McMurray First Nation .
Oil sands and fracking
As early as the 18th century, the Cree sealed their canoes with bitumen from oil sands, which are stored there on a large scale right up to the surface of the earth. Since 1921 attempts have been made to separate the oil from the sand using thermal processes. In the 1930s, Abasands Oil succeeded on a larger scale in separating the oil from the sand using hot water extraction . In the 1970s, due to the Middle East crises, oil sands mining was intensified.
Due to the strong population increase, the prices for real estate have risen sharply and exceed those of Toronto or Vancouver , the most expensive cities in Canada (as of 2006). Although 1,600 houses are being built each year and container houses are being erected by the oil companies, the housing supply can hardly keep up with the growth. The annual average salary of an oil worker was the end of the 2000s, 100,000 Canadian dollars , twice as much as in the rest of Canada.
In addition to oil sands mining, the city's economy is based on natural gas resources , forestry and tourism .
environmental issues
The dense vegetation of the northern boreal zone is threatened by the drought of recent years; in addition, it was completely removed in the eight mining areas north of Fort McMurray and severely damaged by emissions in a wider area. To wash one liter of bitumen out of the sand, you need five liters of water, which is then stored in clarification ponds. The mud in these ponds is contaminated with hydrocarbons, mercury and arsenic. The sulfur extracted from the bitumen is stored in large heaps.
The magazine of the Royal Canadian Geographic Society reported in June 2008 on the "disaster zone" that was created as a result of the daily extraction of over one million barrels of crude oil north of Fort McMurray. Several hundred square kilometers of land have been devastated, and thick smog is rising from the extraction plants and refineries. At that time, production was predicted to quadruple or quintuple by 2020, which has not happened due to the drop in the price of crude oil.
The multiple award-winning film "Dark Eden - The Nightmare of Oil" by the Leipzig- based directors Jasmin Herold and Michael David Beamish shows an existential drama about the blessings and curse of oil production, it was dedicated to the Fridays for Future movement .
Forest fires in April / May 2016
A fire was reported on the outskirts of Fort McMurray on April 30, 2016 at 4:00 p.m. After that there were two controlled and one uncontrolled fire near the city, which later threatened to spread to the city. Around 130 hectares were affected , and evacuation was ordered or recommended for some residential areas .
On May 2, the wind eased, which calmed the fire but made it difficult to localize it from the air. The evacuation requirements have been partially adjusted.
On the 3rd / 4th May 2016, initially around half and later the entire approx. 88,000 residents of the city were asked by the civil protection to leave the city because of a forest fire and to visit protective facilities 20 km away. This is the largest evacuation operation that has ever taken place in Alberta. People were told to head north prudently as the fire hit Alberta Highway 63 south. On the evening of May 4th, the corresponding road to the north was also blocked by the fire.
According to official figures, around 2,000 houses had been destroyed in Fort McMurray by May 5. Authorities intended to airlift up to 25,000 city residents to safety.
On May 6, a large number of these people were evacuated from the north of the city in convoys heading south. Thousands more were flown out.
By May 8, an area of over 160,000 hectares had been burned; As a result, there were fears that the fires would spread to the east into the neighboring province of Saskatchewan, with the area affected doubling. In the course of falling temperatures, light drizzle and the extensive use of the fire brigade, the fires in the city were extinguished: on May 9, it was announced that the community had been spared the feared major catastrophe: approx. 10% of the city, 2,400 Buildings were destroyed.
At times, 2,804 firefighters, 208 helicopters and 29 fire-fighting planes were involved in fighting the fire. 299 firefighters from South Africa , 200 from the USA and 41 from Mexico support the extinguishing work, plus many firefighters from other provinces in Canada.
On June 10, the Alberta provincial government announced in a final report that 5,900 square kilometers of land had been affected by the fire and more than 535 kilometers of firebreaks had been laid. The remaining fires are under control. After waiting for the winter to determine whether there were still embers, the fire was finally declared extinguished on August 2, 2017 after more than a year.
As a general cause of the forest fires, which go beyond the usual extent of the summer fires that are common in Canada's boreal coniferous forests , the prolonged fire period since the 1970s due to rising average temperatures and falling precipitation rates as a result of climate change has been cited. In addition, because of the El Niño climatic phenomenon, the fires were preceded by an exceptionally mild and dry winter and a very early and hot spring. Strong winds kept the fires going. The manner of fighting seasonal forest fires, which has been practiced for decades, has also accelerated and intensified the development of the fire by preventing the regular natural burn-up e.g. B. prevented the lower and dead wood .
traffic
The Alberta Highway 63 was in the 21st century the most important freight artery Canada for trucks (measured in tons per kilometer and number of trucks). It is considered to be overburdened, especially by heavy haulage, and has been expanded to around one billion Canadian dollars since 2008 due to damage, traffic jams and many accidents. However, this expansion is still not completed in spring 2016. As a result of the traffic bottleneck on the highway, Fort McMurray Airport is also congested, which now has almost one million passengers per year, more than eight times its target capacity.
sons and daughters of the town
- Shannon-Ogbani Abeda (* 1996), ski racer starting for Eritrea
- Tantoo Cardinal (* 1950), actress and Cree (Métis)
- Tanya Kalmanovitch (* 1970), jazz musician
- Aaron Lines (* 1977), country musician
- Colin Murphy (born 1980), ice hockey player
- Chris Phillips (* 1978), ice hockey player
- Justin Pogge (born 1986), ice hockey player
- Nolan Pratt (* 1975), ice hockey player
- Scottie Upshall (born 1983), ice hockey player
- Emma Lodge (* 1992), biathlete
Web links
- Fort McMurray Tourism website
- Fort McMurray Community
- "Fort McMoney": Simulation game about Fort McMurray , started in autumn 2013
Individual evidence
- ↑ Statistics Canada - Census Fort McMurray 2011
- ^ Government of Canada, Statistics Canada: Statistics Canada: 2011 Census Profile. In: www12.statcan.gc.ca. Retrieved May 4, 2016 .
- ^ Website of the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation
- ↑ Oil Sands - The Dirty Wealth of Canada ( page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Chapter: Quick money with a downside. hitec magazine on 3sat from August 3, 2009
- ↑ Zane Schwartz: Did climate change contribute to the Fort McMurray fire? McLean's , May 4, 2016.
- ↑ Oil sands mining in Canada: Dramatic ecological and climatic effects. Greenpeace 2010 (pdf)
- ↑ Scar Sands , in: Canadian Geographic, July 2008 ( Memento of the original from May 6, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ "Dark Eden - The Nightmare of Oil"
- ↑ Fire burns on outskirts of Fort McMurray as forest fire risk raised to 'very high'. In: www.cbc.ca. Retrieved May 7, 2016 .
- ^ Fire chief expects fire to hit Fort McMurray. In: www.cbc.ca. Retrieved May 7, 2016 .
- ↑ Fort McMurray braces for high winds in battle with wildfire. In: www.cbc.ca. Retrieved May 7, 2016 .
- ↑ ORF , May 4, 2016, orf.at: 100,000 Canadians have to flee forest fire (May 4, 2016)
- ↑ orf.at: 60,000 people have to flee: Road to the south closed , (May 4, 2016)
- ↑ Frankfurter Rundschau , May 5, 2016, Jörg Michel, fr-online.de: An entire city on the run (May 5, 2016)
- ↑ Forest fires: Canada wants to save tens of thousands of people by airlift . Spiegel Online, May 6, 2016.
- ^ Deutsche Welle (www.dw.com): Forest fires in Canada are spreading | Currently America | DW.COM | 07/05/2016. In: DW.COM. Retrieved May 8, 2016 .
- ^ Deutsche Welle (www.dw.com): Fire in Canada more and more threatening | America | DW.COM | 07/05/2016. In: DW.COM. Retrieved May 8, 2016 .
- ↑ Deutschlandfunk.de , Nachrichten , May 8, 2016: Forest fires could reach other provinces ( Memento from May 8, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) (May 8, 2016)
- ↑ Deutschlandfunk.de , Nachrichten , May 13, 2016: Prime Minister Trudeau in Fort McMurray ( Memento of May 15, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) (May 15, 2016)
- ↑ badische-zeitung.de , Panorama , May 11, 2016: Fort McMurray escapes great inferno (May 15, 2016)
- ↑ Final Update 39: 2016 Wildfires (June 10 at 4:30 pm). In: www.alberta.ca. Alberta Provincial Government, June 10, 2016, accessed July 22, 2018 .
- ↑ It's official - Fort McMurray wildfire finally out. Global Television Network , September 1, 2017, accessed July 22, 2018 .
- ↑ Spektrum.de , May 6, 2016, Daniel Lingenhöhl: Fort McMurray: Why are the forests of Canada burning? (May 15, 2016)
- ↑ Fort McMurray today, May 26, 2014 ( Memento of the original from May 20, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ^ Communication from the provincial government, October 19, 2012
