Courtesy of Rainbow Lake:
Please see below update for May 18, 2023. Before we get to that I wanted to reference the photos attached. One photo in particular, mentioned in the update as well has caused a great deal of anxiety on social media. This photo shows the Rainbow Lake 1km sign with fire burning all around it. I want to reassure people that this is not nearly as terrifying as it looks. This was a controlled burn to prevent the fire from coming into Town. The right hand side of this photo show what that same area looks like today.
To help reassure our residents, we have also posted some aerial photos of the Town taken yesterday afternoon. The Town is secure and there are a lot of great people here making sure it stays that way.
May 18 2023 – Today’s update is very much the same as yesterdays, and this is a very good sign. We have had several days now of calm on our containment lines with only one flare up yesterday on the West end, outside of our guards. We continue to maintain patrols and look for any spotting. For reference, today’s fire behaviour forecast has potential spotting up to 500 metres, the closest the fire came to Town was on our North end at 100 metres. We remain vigilant but are feeling comfortable. This allows me to start building out our re-entry plans with a little more confidence. Please understand that the fire is not going anywhere soon, when we do come back, the Long Lake Fire will still be active around us, but we will not bring anyone home until we are confident the Town is safe. There will also be several days of cleanup, removing sprinklers and resetting gas metres. We also have the additional challenge of no power. It is still not safe enough for Atco to assess the damage to the power poles between the Town and the Chateh road. As we cannot bring people home until Highway 58 is also secure, we will not be able to set a date for future re-entry until we also have an estimated timeline from Atco.
I also want to address briefly some of the photos that you may have seen on social media. There are some frightening photos floating around, usually coupled with comments from the poster that act to sensationalize the event and cause anxiety amongst our residents. Please know that if the worst-case scenario were to come to pass, we will not hide this from you. Our updates are informed, on the ground and relevant. Please take care when viewing information outside of the Town of Rainbow Lake Facebook, the Alberta Wildfire App and our Voyent Alert notifications. These are the best sources of information out there regarding the status of the Town of Rainbow Lake.
Our Town of Rainbow Lake Council will be holding a Council Meeting in the Town of High Level Council Chambers tonight at 7:30pm. I will be joining virtually to discuss some of our triggers for re-entry and answer any questions that people may have. This meeting is public, so feel free to drop in if you are still in the High Level area.
While we are experiencing this period of calm, the fire is still active on our containment lines and it is not safe to come back yet. We are also seeing active burning in the vicinity of the Cenovus plant and Highway 58. We have had a number of individuals trying to come back into Town due to concerns of losing the contents of their refrigerators and deep freezers. At this point we are not able to let anyone through that is not part of the emergency. Given we do have some calm, we believe that we have some capacity, in between fire patrols, to clear out peoples refrigerators and deep freezers for them so that is one less worry for your families at this time. If you can email me at dfletcher@rainbowlake.ca, we will coordinate efforts to try to clear as many homes as possible to help out.
For those of you who locked up your homes prior to the evacuation, we have setup a key drop in partnership with the Town of High Level. You can drop off your key at the Town of High Level office and we will have one of our firefighters coming through to bring it into Town so we can get into your home and clear out your freezers for you.
We cannot guarantee that we will be able to get to everyone, and we will only proceed if you send along a request via email with permission to do so.
We are winning this battle against the Long Lake fire and ask that everyone stay safe and we will continue to keep you updated as the situation evolves.
I would also like to open it up to our residents that have specific questions they would like addressed in the updates to email me at dfletcher@rainbowlake.ca and so long as we stay quiet here, I will try to address them as best I can for everyone with the following update.
We do ask that everyone call in and register with our reception team at 1-780-560-0164 if you have not already.
Please stay safe and we will continue to push out daily updates here and on our Town of Rainbow Lake Facebook page.
