Albertans: Alberta History and Fire Cast

albertans: For a few days at least, Albertans, who can be a fractious bunch, ignored their differences to deal with the crisis of 90,000 refugees from the flames, according to Rabble. Coming when it did, the fire cast a pall -- literal and metaphorical -- over the Alberta NDP government's plans for a celebration of its unexpected victory at the polls one year before in the May 5, 2015, general election. This was at once a terrible moment and a great moment in Alberta history a time of enormous stress and loss to which Albertans responded with generosity, courage, wit and skill. Obviously, there was no time for such fripperies in the crisis created by the massive fire moving into the city of Fort McMurray, where it eventually would destroy about 2,400 structures, roughly 15 per cent of the city's buildings. Only about 3.5 billion of the losses were insured, making this the most expensive disaster in Canadian history, at least as far as insurance companies were concerned. Given the severity of the fires, even at about 10 billion it was probably lucky the losses weren't greater. (www.immigrantscanada.com). As reported in the news.