The orders require immediate reporting of grass fires with updates on their speed, direction and intensity, and note that Range Control receives twice daily weather forecasts and can halt training when troops are endangered. Canadian officials said earlier that a grass fire had started roughly a kilometer from where 3rd Battalion, Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry troops were conducting live fire drills under Exercise Apollo Shooter several hours before the disaster, and base administrators allowed training to continue after judging it did not pose an excessive risk.
Driven by wind gusts up to 100 km/h (62 mph), the fire crossed a kilometer in 30 to 60 seconds and overtook the unit's administrative area, leaving 19 of the 39 hospitalized soldiers in critical condition. Prime Minister Mark Carney has said the cause of the fire remains under investigation, after military officials ruled out initial unconfirmed reports of a natural gas well or pipeline explosion on the base, where Alberta's energy regulator had taken over an oil and gas firm's infrastructure less than two weeks earlier.