Wildfires more intense and more frequent in Alberta Population
shifts to wooded areas, aging forests, and changing weather all
factors Before the fires that devastated Slave Lake last year,
Lac La Biche was the last community in Alberta to be destroyed
by an out-of-control wildfire. It happened in 1919, when a
massive blaze swept west from Saskatchewan across northern
Alberta and burnt all but three of Lac La Biche’s buildings,
killed 14 people, and torched more than two million hectares.
Fast-forward 93 years and wildfires are happening more
frequently—and are more intense—across Alberta’s forested
landscape. Diana McQueen, Alberta’s Minister of Environment and
Sustainable Resource Development, said the province is preparing
to battle the growing wildfire threat. “As the forested
communities in our province grows, so does the wildfire threat,”
McQueen said at a recent news conference in Edmonton. “We’re
also seeing earlier and dryer wildfire seasons … that means we
have to be ready for a new reality of more