Quote:
Originally Posted by godfry n. glad
Ouch. No fun. Beautiful area, too. Sounds like Kelowna and Penticton are probably full as well. Nobody being shunted to Calgary? Or, Edmonton?
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Penticton is actually really small. I'm not sure why the overflow went to Cloverdale (metro Vancouver area) rather than Kelowna, but Cloverdale has the Agriplex (I think it's called that) which is pretty massive and the surrounding fairgrounds with other assorted buildings could camp a lot of people.)
Getting to Edmonton or Calgary from the Caribou region is an ordeal in itself. The drive to Vancouver from Kamloops is about four hours on a lovely six lane highway with a 120km/hour limit. From Prince George, which is cut off right now, it's almost the same drive to Edmonton as Vancouver.
Surrounding regions have sent additional personnel, though, as is normal. From California to Alaska, also with Australia and sometimes South Africa (clusterfuck story to that), there's reciprocity agreements in place. No one region has the manpower to handle a Fort McMurray, but generally no more than one region gets womped at any one time so the firefighters decend on the trouble spots in an organized cooperative manner. When it gets really bad, they will call the off season Australians and (I hope still) the South Africans. And they us in the Southern hemisphere summer.