A Reader’s guide to the CFB Wainwright Fire: Map; Ranges; Garrison

Kevin J.S. Duska Jr. | Prime Rogue/The Signal Cage | October 31, 2026 | Calgary, AB

Our 70 cm satellite image of the Oct. 17 burn, labelled. It shows where the ranges are, where the fire was at 12:17 p.m., what didn’t burn, and what was on the ground three days later.

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Introduction: A Reader’s guide to CFB Wainwright

Four soldiers died and dozens were hurt when fire swept part of CFB Wainwright on Oct. 17. Three days later, a Satellogic satellite photographed the burned ground at 70 cm resolution. Prime Rogue licensed that image.

This guide labels it: the burn’s edge, the official range locations, the roads, the line where Landsat first saw fire at 12:17 p.m., and every vehicle, structure and object we could find on Oct. 20.

Use it to find your way around the close-ups in our teaser

Everything here shows the ground as it was on Oct. 20, not on the day of the fire.

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Image 1: Reader’s-guide base map

What you’re looking at

• The dark ground inside the red line is what burned on Oct. 17: about 1,050 hectares inside this image.
• The red dots near the top left are where Landsat detected fire at 12:17 p.m., about three hours before a cold front arrived around 3:28 p.m. and drove the fire east-south-east. The yellow box enlarges the area around Range 2, Range 15 and the road head.
• Numbered markers are objects we could see on Oct. 20. None of them is inside the burn, and none can be identified at this resolution.

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Image 2: Every range near the burn (locator map)

What you’re looking at

• Yellow rings are the range locations given in the base’s own Range Standing Orders (2024 edition).
• Dashed cream outlines are ranges as volunteers mapped them in OpenStreetMap. Some of those sit hundreds of metres from the official spots.
• Ranges 10, 11, 13, 20, 21 and 22 lie west of our high-resolution image, including Range 11, the grenade launcher range. The background is a pre-fire image from Oct. 4.

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CFB Wainwright Ranges: Close-Up Views

Range 2

What you’re looking at:

The fire burned up to the north side of the Range 2 access road but left a pocket of about 5 ha south of it, where the official grid reference falls. The gravel pad at the road’s west end had a large white object on it on Oct. 20, with two smaller objects nearby. OpenStreetMap puts “Range 2” around that pad, 354 m from the official location.

Range 3

What you’re looking at:

The official grid is about 200 m from the burn’s edge. The fire touched only a sliver of the mapped range outline, at its north-west corner. The very dark area at top is a low, wet spot that burned to black ash.

Ranges 4 and 5

What you’re looking at:

These two small ranges aren’t in our copy of the base’s range orders, so their outlines come from OpenStreetMap only. They’re well outside the burn. The buildings and sheds beside them look permanent.

Range 6

What you’re looking at:

A long lane with structures at its north end, which our image cuts off. A row of small bright items there may be targets or markers. This range didn’t burn.

Range 8

What you’re looking at:

Another long lane, with a small shed beside it and a white structure at the end of a loop road. It’s well clear of the burn.

Range 14

What you’re looking at:

The Oct. 17 burn ends about 1.8 km from Range 14’s official grid. Fires on Sept. 18–20 and Oct. 14 burned through the OpenStreetMap outline of the range, about 900 m from the official grid. A small blue-and-white object sat at a track junction there on Oct. 20.

Range 15

What you’re looking at:

Range 15’s official grid is at the junction where the east-west track meets the north-south road. The burn stops 12 m short of it. On Oct. 20 there were small objects on the road’s west shoulder, a large white object about 80 m south-east, and pairs of small items to the north-east.

Range 19

What you’re looking at:

The black area is outside the image. Earlier 2026 fires came within about 300 m of Range 19’s mapped outline. We saw no vehicles or equipment in this view.

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Image 11: The garrison and the fire

What you’re looking at

• Rings mark every 2 km from the centre of the burn.
• Range Control, as labelled in OpenStreetMap, is 5.5 km away; the Camp Wainwright heliport (CFF7) is 7.1 km away.
• Wainwright Airport (CYWV) is 4.8 km away and Field 21 (CZWN) is 14.7 km away.
• This is a 20 m pre-fire image from Oct. 4: it shows where things are, not individual buildings. The garrison is outside our high-resolution image.

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