Firefighter Narrowly Escapes Fire Tornado By Diving Into A River — Behold The Terrifying Power Of ‘The Firenado’

Last weekend a St. Albert firefighter was forced to dive into the Sturgeon River in order to escape a powerful, and swift-moving fire tornado. ‘Firenado’ is actually the nomenclature that I prefer but I recently found out on Twitter that the actual term for this phenomenon is ‘fire whirls’, which sounds weak AF.

Anywho diddlydo, the firefighter who was forced to dive into Canada’s frigid Sturgeon River (near Edmonton) was caught on camera running for his life from the rarely seen Firenado:

https://twitter.com/saffu2130/status/721540467859402752

If you’d prefer YouTube instead of Twitter, here you go:

The CBC reports:

Posted by the St. Albert fire department on Twitter Saturday night, the video shows heavy black smoke from a brush fire billowing into a funnel towards the sky, as firefighters run from the flames behind it.
The fire was burning on April 14 near St. Albert’s Big Lake, a section of the Sturgeon River northwest of Edmonton. It was sparked by a campfire that got out of hand.
Wind and dry grass made the fire so challenging to control that firefighter Vincent Pashko was forced to jump into the river to escape the heat.
“We’re sitting, waiting for the conditions to change, and a windstorm started up from behind,” Pashko told CBC. “The little bit of brush that was behind us lit on fire and … created a windmill, almost like a tornado.”
The winds stoked the hot ash behind him, and while flames weren’t close to him, the heat alone was dangerous.
Pashko heard his co-workers scream for him to look out.

Now I mentioned above that the preferred nomenclature is ‘fire whirls’ and not ‘Firenado’. I know this because @wkbrad, one of my favorite meteorologists on Twitter sent out this tweet(I shit you not, I follow no less than 20 weathermen on Twitter, I don’t know why):

So now you know, ‘Fire Whirls’ and not ‘Fire Tornado’.

(h/t CBC)