Yesterday at approximately 4:00pm a large fire broke out at a Canadian military base and spread quickly. CFB Wainwright (Canadian Forces Base Wainwright) is situated adjacent to the Town of Wainwright in east‑central Alberta.
CFB Wainwright is one of Canada’s busiest military training bases, where soldiers prepare for combat operations. It is home to the Canadian Manoeuvre Training Centre, which conducts realistic battlefield exercises, and the 3rd Canadian Division Training Centre, which provides military training. {LINK}
Media reports, citing unnamed military sources, {LINK} said that a live-fire training exercise hit a gas line or gas well on the base, causing an explosion that spread as a result of high winds. High wind gusts reaching up to 100km/h fanned the flames, causing the blaze to spread rapidly beyond the base’s perimeter and into the adjacent Municipal District of Wainwright.
A doctor at a hospital in the city of Edmonton, 180km (120 miles) northwest of Wainwright, told Canada’s national broadcaster patients were being brought to hospitals across the city as its health-care facilities became “completely overwhelmed” by the number of people requiring care. Today, Prime Minister Mark Carney confirms that four servicemembers were killed and several dozens were injured. WATCH:
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Alberta votes on whether to start seceding from Canada two day after this “incident.” If you believe this was coincidence, there’s a bridge in Brooklyn I can get for you for $1
How long before they blame Trump ?
Where’s the rest of your barracks??
https://getyarn.io/yarn-clip/28a3bbb3-cec7-4a8c-8a6a-8dc03bc33b74#ElPHXCpu.email
this guy is such a clown, as he pretends to be a world leader and prepares Canada for a U.S. invasion. his solution, bring in heads of all government agencies for a discussion. I feel sorryf for all Canadians.
Have they blamed President Trump yet? Asking for my friend Emmanuel…
“High wind gusts reaching up to 100km/h fanned the flames…”
100 km/h is around 62 mph. That’s a lot of wind.
According to the nearest aviation weather station in Lloydminster (CYLL), about 50 miles NE of Wainwright, the wind at 2200Z was 29014G27KT (aka out of the west north west at 16 mph gusting 31 mph). 31 mph is not 62 mph.
So it might have been 100 km/h once the fire got going in a big way which is common, but why didn’t they state that? Was the weather at Wainwright really gusting to 62 mph before the fire? The CFB doesn’t report weather, so unknown to us outsiders.
“…exercise hit a gas line or gas well on the base…”
Do Canadian military bases have gas wells? A gas line is completely normal, but a gas well? Could be, I don’t know, but that’s not very “green.”
The media just might want to dig a bit more into what happened and report completely.
Regardless of the reporting, condolences to the families and I hope those injured recover well.
Not a fan of the Canadian government, but am a big fan of the western Canadian people. Good folks. Wishing them well and good luck
Yes, military bases do oftrn have gas and oil as I started to discover earlier today:
https://theconservativetreehouse.com/blog/2026/10/18/october-18th-2026-presidential-politics-trump-administration-day-637/comment-page-2/#comment-12863016
And CFB Wainwright is situated on gas-rich land.
I do not want to tell the Canadian military how to go about their business, but who signed off on a live fire exercise with high wind gusts at 100 km/h? Also, what is a firing range doing so close to gas lines and well heads? Or could the 100 km/h gust have blown the ordnance that far off course? Someone needs to be put on the spit and slow-roasted over this debacle.
See my post above yours re the gas part. Military and Oil/gas sharing land is not uncommon in Canada. CFB Wainwright is on top of a rich gas field.
This is an old Soviet Anti-War song that dates back to at least World War II and is based upon the poem Zhuravli by Rasul Gamzatov.
The song was made very popular in recent times by the late Russian baritone opera singer Dmitri Hvoroskovsky.
. . . It seems to me sometimes that all those soldiers
Who’d left their lives on battlefields of war
Instead of lying in the ground in quiet solace
Became White Cranes and in the sky they soar . . .
This beautiful rendition by Batyrkhan Shukenov has English subtitles:
0.o
That’s just terrible. Those poor guys couldn’t have known what was waiting out there.
While I can see why people would connect this explosion with the upcoming secession vote, I don’t think the connection stands up to scrutiny. The implication is that somebody with power in Alberta would be willing to murder their own countrymen in order to influence the vote. If you’ve ever been to Alberta or met anyone from up there, you would know right away that this is just not possible. On the other hand, the kind of people who would kill soldiers for political gain wouldn’t want to encourage Alberta to secede, so they likely wouldn’t cause such destruction. This time, I think maybe it really was just a terrible accident.
My understanding is it was Canadian paratroopers that were training. Some of Canada’s best.
It doesn’t take a gas line or well to have this kind of thing happen. Conducting live fire training or even training which involves flares, star clusters, or grenade and artillery simulators in an area packed full of dried vegetation is asking for this exact kind of thing to happen.
We set a whole mountainside on fire in Italy with a single parachute flare. Luckily the vegetation pretty much ended where it came up against a sheer rock cliff near the summit of the mountain.
Many people don’t realize that burns are one of the most common types of war wounds. Realistic training for war is always dangerous.
There is another aspect to this also. Officers who fear for their careers if a soldier in their command is injured or killed in training tend to carry that fear over into real world situations and it can cause many lives to be lost. That is exactly what happened when over 200 military personnel were killed by a suicide bomber in Beirut in 1983. The Marines on guard were ordered not to have their firearms locked and loaded. A classic case of how one trains carrying over into real world operations in a hostile environment.
….that totally makes sense but would they have been doing that in a high wind situation…….
They claim that those winds came in after the fire was started. Still, even if that were the case, somebody should have been monitoring the forecast and the live data from weather stations that anyone can get on their phone these days. Like all situations like this, they’ll have to settle on who is the fall guy no matter who is actually responsible.
it was Indians serving in the Canadian military… not exactly “Canada’s best”
Terrible! I hope the families of the dead can find peace again. Praying for you, Canada!
Canada has had some leaders that suck. Carney is really bad. I just cannot see this being “not planned” with the province voting to leave.
Speaking of large fires, Mark Carney might take a match to his official Canadian Prime Minister’s Ottawa residence at 24 Sussex Drive, which has remained uninhabitable for decades, due to a severe rodent and insect infestation in the walls and attic along with black mold, lead and asbestos contamination as well as failed mechanical, electrical and security systems
For three generations the historic residence has been a symbol of political paralysis and national neglect and the last renovation was in 1951, over 75 years ago. Carney’s official positions is that repairs will soon be underway…yeah, right!
24 Sussex Drive is an apt metaphor for the condition of the Canadian economy under Carney’s stewardship!