Juno News - October 20, 2026


Questions mount after deadly fire at Canadian military base

Mentioned
Berna Mocha Bezergin Sheila Gunn-Reed Speaker Carney
Does Canada need to abolish the Senate？

Episode Stats


Length

13 minutes

Words per minute

151.46

Word count

2,086

Sentence count

76


Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 A team of investigators is sifting for clues today as to the cause of a deadly fire at the
00:00:10.860 Canadian military base in Wainwright, Alberta on the weekend. This video is shot by Mocha
00:00:16.400 Bezergan of the town of Wainwright in central, east-central Alberta, early Sunday morning.
00:00:23.160 At this moment, the death toll stands at four. 39 others were hospitalized.
00:00:28.240 A commander says military officials were aware of the fire hours earlier but thought it was contained.
00:00:35.240 It broke out in a grassy training area and a sudden shift in winds sent flames racing towards the soldiers.
00:00:43.240 Prime Minister Carney gave this update in the House of Commons.
00:00:47.240 Mr. Speaker, I would like to share with this House what we know at this moment.
00:00:52.240 On Saturday afternoon, soldiers of the 3rd Battalion, Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry,
00:00:58.640 and members of the Army's reserve training alongside them were conducting live fire exercises.
00:01:06.500 A fire was burning in the training area.
00:01:09.960 Driven by ferocious winds, the fire jumped nearly a kilometer in less than a minute to where the soldiers were gathered.
00:01:18.140 The original cause of the fire is not yet known.
00:01:22.240 Fire Marshal team is conducting the investigation.
00:01:25.940 Juneau News is also reporting the legacy media vehicles blocked a lease road,
00:01:30.720 causing firefighters to drive around their vehicles to get to the scene.
00:01:35.780 A video posted by Rebel News shows government-subsidized media vehicles
00:01:40.440 blocking the road used by first responders.
00:01:44.040 This post by Sheila Gunn-Reed.
00:01:47.000 The mainstream media parked their vehicles in such a way that it blocked the lease road
00:01:51.780 for firefighters in Wainwright today. Firemen had to go off-road and around. The police we spoke to
00:01:59.180 were not happy. Our guest today is Mocha Beers again, who is just back from Wainwright. Welcome, Mocha.
00:02:07.820 Good afternoon. Talk a little bit about what you saw when you were there.
00:02:11.780 Can you paint us a picture? I arrived approximately around 3 a.m. and on my way to Wainwright,
00:02:21.580 i saw four ambulances pass me by heading toward edmonton by the time i got there near 4 a.m
00:02:29.500 there were nothing going on the hospital was deadly quiet no ambulances no police vehicles
00:02:36.920 nobody around the only person i found who was awake at that hour was a mcdonald's employee
00:02:43.520 a young boy who agreed to give me an interview and he described how busy the scene was how
00:02:50.380 so many paramedics came to the to the restaurant to order food and coffee very quickly and how
00:03:00.780 the people in town were offering to pay for them and the scene was dark very quiet it was quiet
00:03:08.900 until 7 a.m and then people start waking up contractors coming to the town I went to the
00:03:14.920 I went near the military base and I saw that power was on, buildings were intact, because heading toward Wainwright, because of the lack of information, both from authorities and the media, also the speculation going online was that the whole military base maybe, you know, got engulfed in fire and maybe the death toll was much higher, like in the hundreds.
00:03:44.920 But when I arrived at around near 4 a.m., when I saw that it was quiet, I was very relieved.
00:03:51.420 And when I saw the military base, from what I can see from a public road, was standing and had power, I was also relieved.
00:03:58.860 So, yeah, the scene was very quiet and dark.
00:04:04.220 It's a great contrast to hours ago when it was hectic, busy.
00:04:10.960 The airport, I checked out the airport as well, the local airfield.
00:04:14.920 it was quiet as well it was the scene of uh many uh air ambulances landing and taking off
00:04:23.320 carrying injured just hours before i got there and um yeah when i was going there i thought it
00:04:30.940 was going to be much worse because edmonton uh hospitals declared code orange for their mass
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00:05:54.900 better to be safe than sorry. How close did you get to the actual fire scene?
00:05:59.980 I was not able to get too close. I did not see any smoke or fire. It was happening far from
00:06:05.400 Wainwright, from what I can tell. I did not see any fire trucks either. I saw some other
00:06:10.300 reporters got near the fire. It was ongoing. Yeah. I mean, the people you spoke with,
00:06:19.620 they must have been just shocked by all of this. You know, this is not something you normally
00:06:23.700 expect uh did you get any reaction from the folks in wainwright in the community the people i spoke
00:06:31.300 with they were shocked they you know they approach it with it's like they're it's a small town right
00:06:37.460 and once when something like that happens they don't know how to react they're on the radar of
00:06:42.580 international news all of a sudden but uh people are you know that they they live well the military
00:06:49.780 base itself is a community and they are together with the wainwright community they're they're one
00:06:55.300 in the same so they're impacted uh very heavily and the whole country is we're all we're all
00:07:02.660 mourning it's it's a terrible tragedy four soldiers dead and 39 injured and yeah absolutely i
00:07:10.740 mean especially coming around this time with the referendum and there must have been some
00:07:15.700 concerns by some that this may have been linked somehow to what was going on um today as a matter
00:07:22.020 of fact did you hear much speculation around that i didn't hear in wainwright but on social media
00:07:31.060 people were discussing you know some discussing this could be a false flag or it could be related
00:07:37.940 to referendum terrorism or, I mean, I think that people died here
00:07:44.980 and I don't want to speculate.
00:07:47.600 Yeah, I don't blame you.
00:07:49.120 Yeah, let's do their jobs and then we can criticize the investigation
00:07:55.240 or their findings then maybe, but yeah.
00:07:58.080 Yeah, and these investigations can drag on a long time.
00:08:01.680 I mean, the victims obviously want answers as quickly as they can
00:08:04.780 And oftentimes, as we've all seen, sometimes those explanations are slow in coming.
00:08:10.680 It is interesting that the fire broke out in this grassy training area, and it was thought that it was under control, it was contained.
00:08:22.300 And so suddenly there was a shift in the winds, very strong winds, and it raced within a matter of 30 seconds to a minute.
00:08:33.800 uh it hit these soldiers and i guess they probably didn't see it coming i mean they must have been
00:08:39.240 so stunned that the flames were coming in their direction as quickly as they were that
00:08:44.520 they didn't have a whole lot of time to react is that your sense of what may have happened
00:08:49.720 that's what sounds like happened because it was a very windy day that day the day of the training
00:08:56.680 it was windy all across alberta and from what i understand wind gusts were hitting up to 100
00:09:05.000 kilometer per hour in that region and you know the question i have why like what started the fire
00:09:12.920 why was it not dealt with earlier and
00:09:19.560 why why was the fire not a concern when there's there's such
00:09:23.400 uh in such a windy day and um it's such a tragedy people are questioning people have questions
00:09:33.320 well imagine the family members of the dead and injured saying why didn't you get those soldiers
00:09:41.400 out of there um you know some decision and somebody made the call to continue those exercises
00:09:50.040 despite the fact that there was a fire and it ended up costing lives young lives also young men
00:09:59.160 died i mean it shouldn't be like this um i well i don't think anyone intended to uh you know
00:10:08.040 have have this happen but somebody needs to take accountability uh we can't have this happen again
00:10:15.880 Also, do we have the healthcare capacity to handle tragedies like this?
00:10:22.000 Are the injured being taken care of?
00:10:24.160 Do we have enough hospital staff trained in treating burns and hospital beds enough to take care of such a number of burned victims, right?
00:10:35.880 And that's another area I think we need to look into.
00:10:39.300 Yeah, I'm thinking as well, when you're talking about how the federal government has funded military over the years, really, you know, cutting back and, you know, cutting corners wherever they can, you know, is this one of the areas where, you know, it's easy to be a Monday morning quarterback, you know, and looking back and think, well, I should have done this and just should have done that.
00:11:06.900 but i guess once the investigation is done and perhaps recommendations come through we'll have
00:11:14.160 to see what those look like um because i mean this is just unconscionable i cannot imagine
00:11:21.180 what our nato partners are thinking you know how could this how could a fire lead to such
00:11:27.740 a toll on soldiers in this way with four dead at this moment i mean that could change
00:11:35.780 and another 39 injured it's a head scratcher for me mocha and i'm i suspect that's probably true
00:11:44.500 for many people in the military inside and and outside canada um do you want to talk at all
00:11:51.240 about the blockage of the road we juno news have been reporting on it rebel news was reporting on
00:11:57.300 it it just seems rather irresponsible for media or anybody else for it to park on that particular
00:12:04.520 road, knowing it was the only way in. And then, of course, when you had fire vehicles coming up
00:12:12.400 behind it, they had to go off-road and so forth. Not a good look for the media in this one, is it?
00:12:21.500 No, it's terrible. And the mainstream media, they have privileges when it comes to where they can
00:12:27.600 park at cities or in, you know, near federal buildings. They have privilege they can park
00:12:33.660 where the police parks or they don't have to abide by uh the parking rules like the rest of us and
00:12:40.260 i didn't go into the fire area i didn't try i was even hesitant to go near the military base because
00:12:47.140 authorities earlier warned to stay out of the way to let the emergency crews go through but
00:12:52.980 yeah i saw that video of mainstream media's vehicles blocking the fire truck and
00:12:58.460 it's utterly irresponsible certainly unacceptable and uh you know who's going to hold them
00:13:04.560 accountable for it i think they need to be held accountable for that yeah i i doubt that they
00:13:09.340 were reporting on that part of the story anyway we really appreciate you you coming on the show
00:13:16.300 how do people find you online mocha uh they can find me on my website media bezirgan.com i'm also
00:13:23.380 active on x as mocha bezirgan and it's been a pleasure thank you for having me mocha bezirgan
00:13:30.260 appreciate you coming on the show thank you so much thank you if you enjoyed the show and
00:13:34.740 appreciate independent journalism please consider becoming a premier member of juno news by going to
00:13:40.340 junonews.com backslash straight up it helps us do what we do here thank you so much for tuning in
00:13:45.540 and we'll see you next time.