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The Davey Bulletin | November/December 2016
MY DAVEY
CANADA BATTLES FORT MCMURRAY FIRE AFTERMATH
Burnt and brittle trees crumbled
like spent match sticks as crews
felled them. Others, blackened and
scorched, simply toppled on their
own – surprising and startling to crew
members – as they succumbed to
days of exposure to intense heat.
Downed power lines – both
transmission and distribution lines –
snaked across the charred forest
McMurray wildfire this past summer.
The fire, which started in May, covered
1.4 million acres across Alberta and
Saskatchewan before firefighters could
bring it under control. It destroyed
close to 2,000 structures and forced
90,000 people to evacuate. Countless
trees burned.
Angus Hill, Canada regional utility
The Fort McMurray wildfire scorched 1.4 million
acres across Alberta and Saskatchewan
before fire crews brought it under control.
"
Our job was to eliminate the hazards so they could
restore the power to the regional municipality
of Buffalo and the city of Fort McMurray.
"
– Angus Hill
regional utility manager, Canada
manager, said Davey crews mobilized
within a day to support the client,
ATCO Electric, which needed help
removing nearly incinerated and fallen
trees from utility rights-of-way so
power could be restored to the area.
"There were a lot of special
challenges," Hill said. "Some of it
we were able to plan in advance for.
floor. Flare-ups brought forestry
firefighters, looking to extinguish
flash fires, roving into challenging
work areas already complicated by
the stifling environment.
At the center of it all, soot-stained
and determined, employees of The
Davey Tree Expert Co. of Canada,
Limited, worked to help restore power
to the areas hit hardest by the Fort
Canada employees from six
different offices and accounts
deployed to help restore power
to the Fort McMurray area.
