By Sumayya
The fire that killed four Canadian soldiers and left 19 people in very bad condition started with a smoking grass fire that grew fast in an Alberta base’s training zone while workers were doing exercises, leaders said on Sunday.
Officials stated that 39 people were in hospitals because of the fire at Canadian Forces Base Wainwright, which Prime Minister Mark Carney called one of the worst peacetime disasters for Canada’s military on its own land. Winds blowing up to 96 kilometers (60 miles) per hour fed the flames, which started around 4 p.m. MDT (2200 GMT) on Saturday. However, they were under 50 km per hour right before the fire, Major General Wade Rutland told news writers at a press meeting. He described the sudden strong winds and the fast spread of the fire as a rare and swift event where the flames moved 1 km in 30 to 60 seconds. “I’ve certainly never seen anything like it,” said Rutland, the leader of the 1st Canadian Division, which is based in Edmonton, about 210 km west of the military camp.
Officials named the dead soldiers as Sergeant Morgan Wong, Private Shaun Farrell, Private Aidan Goulding, and Private Hayden Lykkemark. “The country is crying for those brave members of our Armed Forces whom we have lost,” Carney said Sunday, adding that he ordered flags on government buildings across the land to be lowered to half-staff to honor the victims. Alberta Premier Danielle Smith said many of the hurt people will need weeks and months of special, high-level medical care. When the fire started, Rutland said, 85 soldiers from the 3rd Battalion, Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry, were in tough combat training using real bullets at the base, which sits in a flat prairie area. The soldiers were getting ready to be sent to Latvia, where Canadian forces now have their biggest international military work.
Rutland said the event is still being checked out, and he refused to guess what caused the grass fire. Leaders do not think the area’s many oil and gas pipes and buildings had anything to do with the accident, he said. He also ruled out any outside meddling. CFB Wainwright had 1,310 military and civilian workers living there as of 2021, according to population data. The base holds the Canadian Manoeuvre Training Centre, which runs practice plans and drills for the army. Carney said the people hurt in Saturday’s fire came from military camps across the entire country. Military and civilian fire teams fought the flames through the night in some of the hardest conditions you could think of, Carney noted.
Twenty-two road ambulances and eight flying helper helicopters came to the scene, Smith shared. Patients are being looked after in Edmonton, Wainwright, Calgary, and Red Deer. Military search and rescue experts also parachuted right into the area, Rutland said. Medical workers in Edmonton said a “code orange,” or mass-injury event, was started to organize the hospital help for patients being moved from Wainwright. The town of Wainwright, which has a population of about 6,600 people, sits just north of the military base. The local town office posted on internet sites that the fire had jumped past the base fence into the nearby neighborhood, but no orders to run away had been given. It stated on Sunday that the fire is not expected to grow past its current lines.
