On Sunday morning, December 14, 1997, the Chinook winds hit southern Alberta with a vengeance. As the winds came down the mountain sides, it picked up some burning garbage from a residential burning barrel, carried it through the nearby forest and out onto the plains. Within four hours this fire had burned a path up to 10 miles wide and 30 miles long, destroying five houses and a large number of livestock and forcing the evacuation of 350 people from the nearby town of Granum.

The following is an eyewitness account by Don Douglas, Fire Chief of the Granum Volunteer Fire Department:

"When I first saw the fire coming over the ridge, it was spinning like a tornado. The fire was burning the gasses in the smoke cloud and it was a 1000 yards in front of the base. The flames reached over 150 feet in the air and the firestorm was dropping fire balls out of the sky in front of the existing flames which started spot fires everywhere.

"We didn't realize it at the time but the fire actually came in four separate waves, it wasn't one solid front. It burned different areas at different times. The winds were shifting driving it north and later south and then back again. We tried to get helicopter support from Alberta Forestry but they had grounded all their aircraft that day due to the very high winds.

"When the fire hit the stubble fields it had perfect conditions. The fire was burning at a very high rate of combustion as it was producing smoke that was almost pure white. It was now a weather generating monster, a firestorm completely out of control.

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