Fire burned for hours before CFB Wainwright tragedy: satellite data

The military let training continue at CFB Wainwright on Saturday even though a fire had been burning on the base since noon and forecasts had already warned of high winds, dry conditions and an approaching cold front.

Hours later, a grass fire overtook soldiers during a live-fire exercise at the base, about 200 kilometres southeast of Edmonton, killing four members of the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) and injuring 39, 19 of them critically.

The military says a sudden shift in wind turned a fire it believed was contained into a deadly one.

“The fire was a kilometre away when the wind shifted. It is not normal for a fire to move a kilometre in 30 to 60 seconds,” said Maj.-Gen. Wade Rutland, commander of the 1st Canadian Division.

But satellite imagery reviewed by Global News and weather records reveal warning signs around four hours before the blaze expanded.

Forecasters had also flagged unusually powerful winds days earlier.

Satellite data from NASA’s Fire Information for Resource Management System (FIRMS) detected 59 possible fire hotspots across an area roughly 1.6 kilometres wide at CFB Wainwright at approximately 12:20 p.m. Saturday. Global News could not independently confirm whether it was the same fire that turned fatal.

Mike Flannigan, a wildfire researcher at Thompson Rivers University, said the data definitively showed at least one fire burning on the base roughly four hours before the tragedy, although he could not rule out multiple fires.

To be detectable by satellite, he said, it likely started “at least half an hour before that, maybe even hours before that.”

The detections do not show the fire’s size, when it began, or whether the blaze that later turned deadly was the one detected.

The Office of the Canadian Forces Provost Marshal declined to answer questions from Global News about the event, as the investigation is ongoing and requires co-operation from multiple agencies.

As the afternoon wore on, strong-wind forecasts escalated into Environment Canada warnings, while warm, dry conditions and an approaching cold front created what wildfire experts call a potentially lethal combination.

“This was just a confluence of really extreme conditions that all played out at the exact moment when they had an active fire in the area,” says Jen Beverly, an associate professor of wildland fire at the University of Alberta.

Rutland said at a press conference Sunday that a fire burned on the base “for several hours,” but training continued “for a certain amount of time” because commanders believed the fire was contained.

“The weather for the majority of the day was well within standard procedures, well below 50 kilometres,” he added. “This was uncommon, rapid, and I certainly hadn’t seen anything like it. Certainly we train in all types of conditions because you don’t know where you’re going to operate.”

Three former senior military officers interviewed by Global News said training exercises often continue while a fire burns nearby, provided the base’s Range Control deems it safe. They also said strong winds alone wouldn’t necessarily be grounds to suspend training.

The Wainwright area is consistently windy, partly because of its exposed prairie landscape. Environment Canada records from nearby Lloydminster – the closest available long-term climate data – show prevailing westerly winds for most of the year, with stronger average winds outside the summer months.

But more than a dozen residents interviewed by Global News described the gusts as stronger than anything they’d ever experienced. The same winds tore across the province before they reached Wainwright, kicking up dust storms, damaging property and even pushing semi-trailer trucks off the highway.

“I was outside, and it almost blew me away. I had to seek shelter in the building as the wind went through,” says Roger Holmes, editor of the town’s Star Edge newspaper.

“I’ve lived in this town for over 30 years, and I’ve never seen a wind storm like that come through.”

Dry, blustery conditions had already gripped the Wainwright area in the days leading up to the deadly blaze.

Environment Canada issued separate wind warnings for the region Wednesday, which remained in effect into early Thursday. The Weather Network and news outlets, including Global News, forecast a cold front crossing Alberta on Saturday with powerful winds.

“It was well advertised days in advance. Computer models knew there would be winds gusting 80 to 100 kilometres an hour,” said Global News meteorologist Anthony Farnell.

The area was also in an extended dry spell.

Weather records show Wainwright had received just 3.5 millimetres of rain this October, with no significant rainfall. The last substantial rainfall was on Sept. 7, when approximately 23.5 millimetres fell, roughly six weeks earlier.

By Saturday, wildfire danger across much of southern Alberta, including Wainwright, was rated “extreme,” according to provincial data and the Canadian Wildland Fire Information System.

That appears to contradict an internal memo issued Sunday by the military’s Strategic Joint Staff (SJS), which rated the fire risk as low.

It is unclear whether the memo referred to broader fire-weather conditions or the risk posed by the exercise.

NASA satellite data show possible fire activity at CFB Wainwright at two different times Saturday.

The first detections came at 12:17 p.m., when NASA’s Landsat 8 satellite identified 59 possible fire hotspots across an area roughly 1.6 kilometres wide.

More than two and a half hours later, at 2:49 p.m., a second satellite system, VIIRS, detected additional hotspots in the area.

Landsat can detect smaller fires with greater precision, while VIIRS provides more frequent observations. The timestamps reflect when the satellites passed over the area, rather than when the fires began.

The detections do not establish the size of the fire, exactly when it began or whether it was the same blaze that later turned deadly.

Wildfire researcher Mike Flannigan said the fire likely started “at least half an hour before that, maybe even hours before that,” for satellites to detect it.

Within an hour, powerful winds were sweeping through the Edmonton region, where the international airport reportedly recorded a gust of 117 kilometres an hour around 1 p.m. Residents described massive dust clouds, property damage and power outages.

Around the same time in Wainwright, conditions were comparatively calm, with temperatures hovering around a balmy 20 C and winds moving at approximately 15 kilometres an hour.

But at 2:15 p.m., Environment Canada issued a wind warning for the Lloydminster region, which includes Wainwright, forecasting gusts of up to 100 kilometres an hour.

By 3 p.m., weather records show, temperatures at the base had climbed above 23 C — before plunging more than 10 degrees in an hour.

Relative humidity was also falling, creating what fire scientists call “crossover fire conditions”, when the temperature in degrees Celsius exceeds the relative humidity percentage.

“Whenever you see that […] it’s a red flag that you can have extreme fire behavior,” Beverly said.

A cold front can also swing the wind abruptly, dramatically changing how a fire spreads, she explained.

“It means that the flank or side of your fire can suddenly become the head of the fire.”

Around 3 p.m., Environment Canada extended its wind warning in a separate alert, with forecasters expecting gusts up to 90 kilometres an hour. But strong winds alone would not necessarily halt military training, said retired Col. Ryan Jurkowski, director of the Conference of Defence Associations.

“In my 30 years of training with the Canadian Armed Forces for infantry training, wind has never been a factor.”

He said he’d trained with higher gusts, and that inclement weather “adds to the value of the training.”

By 4 p.m., Environment Canada data showed gusts at CFB Wainwright reaching 48 kilometres an hour. The agency also recorded an 82-kilometre-an-hour gust that day, though its public data does not say when. Environment Canada did not respond to a request for clarification.

“That wind was so strong, and it was blowing me over trying to carry my baby and the cats,” says Madison Keller, who lives on the edge of the military base.

Her father called to warn her about an approaching fire, she said, but within moments, it was upon her. She scrambled to gather her one-year-old baby, pets and a bag of essentials and fled.

“I went inside to grab the bag, and I came out, and it was already [raining] ashes. It was probably two minutes from when my dad told me to when we left,” she said.

“It just came out of nowhere. No noise, besides the wind. That’s all we heard was wind.”

As the winds shifted, Rutland said, the once-contained fire became a fast-moving inferno.

“I spoke to my commander on the ground last night and this morning, and he said within 30 seconds to a minute, they saw no fire, and then there was a fire right on top of them.”

Wildfire experts say that kind of speed would be extraordinary.

Flannigan said grass fires typically spread at about one-tenth the speed of the wind, while Beverly says that even under extreme conditions, Canada’s fire-behaviour prediction system might forecast a grass fire spreading at around 20 kilometres an hour.

But Rutland’s account suggests the Wainwright fire was moving between 60 and 120 kilometres an hour — several times faster than those estimates.

“If the fire was spreading at the rate that they described, it’s not impossible, but it would be on record as the fastest moving fire ever recorded in Canada,” says Beverly, adding that such speeds have been recorded in rural Australia grass fires and during the 2023 Hawaii wildfires.

Brian MacDonald, who advised then-defence minister Peter MacKay in 2008, said it was “fairly routine” for military exercises to continue even when a fire was burning nearby, provided it was considered safe.

“There’s usually a detailed meteorological report that’s provided, but of course those are often imperfect, and the imperative is to continue on with the mission,” he said.

Locals confirmed the base was known for fires.

Wainwright resident Annette Nesbitt said plumes of smoke rising above the base rarely caused alarm.

“We say that the base was on fire again, but it is always on fire… you don’t think anything of it.”

She did not hear an explosion, as has been widely reported. Neither did several other residents Global News interviewed. Some heard loud “booms,” but said that’s common near the base. “We’re used to hearing the guns, you don’t think anything of it,” Nesbitt said.

“You go to sleep hearing that sound, and the joke is – if something serious happened, how long would it take us to realize?”

This isn’t the first time a fire on an Alberta military base has spread out of control.

In September 2017, a grass fire broke out as soldiers at CFB Suffield were destroying an unexploded artillery shell. Fuelled by dry conditions and strong winds, it scorched across roughly 36,000 hectares, destroyed a ranch, killed more than 160 cattle and forced dozens of residents to evacuate.

The military subsequently pledged to improve its firefighting and fire-prevention procedures.

What sparked the deadly Wainwright fire remains unanswered, with politicians, community leaders and military officials largely unwilling to speculate while the investigation continues.

Rutland offered few details about the possible cause, other than ruling out any involvement of oil and gas infrastructure or “outside interference.”

“There was a multitude of ordnance moving through the Wainwright training area yesterday: grenade launcher, grenades, small arms, ammunition. Quite frankly, it could have been any of that or none of it,” he said.

But beyond what ignited the flames, the 50 investigators deployed to Wainwright face another question: whether the deaths and injuries could have been avoided.

Retired Canadian Armed Forces Maj.-Gen. Denis Thompson cautioned against drawing conclusions before the investigation is complete, but said one question remains central.

“The real question here is, was this a preventable accident or incident? Or was it non-preventable?”