The devastation of the fires is incredible.

When a fire burns intensely, it burns longer and leaves behind a white and not black ash on the ground. When white ash is left behind there is complete mineralization of the items burnt.

13 May 2016
By Earnest Scheyder

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau (click here) praised firefighters on Friday for defending the energy hub of Fort McMurray and promised the federal government would pour money in to its recovery.
Trudeau toured the town in a military helicopter and saw a patchwork of neighborhoods destroyed by an inferno that forced the evacuation of all 88,000 inhabitants. Some homes still stood, while others had burned to their foundations.
The inferno closed the extensive oil sands operations near the town and the effort to restart them is progressing slowly. The wildfire knocked out nearly half, or 1.07 million barrels per day (bpd), of Alberta's oil sands capacity....