Weather in your inbox

Forecast Location

Sign Up

By signing up you agree to the Terms & Privacy Policy. Unsubscribe at any time.

In 2011, a massive wildfire destroyed 40 percent of Slave Lake, a town in Alberta, Canada. The blaze left $544 million (U.S. dollars) in damage, and the disaster was called "stark and devastating."

Before Alberta's current disaster, a 210,000-acre wildfire burning out of control in Fort McMurray, is over, the Slave Lake fire could be just a fraction of what they're dealing with right now.

With 1,600 homes and buildings destroyed and thousands more possibly threatened, Fort McMurray has already eclipsed the 374 homes destroyed at Slave Lake, according to Reuters. At least 88,000 people have been forced to leave their homes, and hundreds of those evacuees will return to see their properties burned to the ground. As they evacuated, they drove frantically down roads lined with towering infernos that claimed a Super 8 motel and blew up a gas station right in front of people who were trying to escape.

On average, homes run more than twice as expensive in Fort McMurray as they do in Slave Lake, which will force the cost of the disaster up twice as quickly.

(MORE: Latest News on the Wildfire | What You Need To Know)

"If you're looking at four times that of Slave Lake you're getting to well over ($1.6 billion), so there is a possibility that this may become the biggest catastrophic claim in Canada," DBRS analyst Stewart McIlwraith told Reuters.

Considering the factors, the Fort McMurray fire is likely to be the costliest disaster in Alberta's history. As for the costliest event for the entire country, that was the $5.7 billion flood in Calgary of June 2013 that killed five people.

If there's a silver lining from the horrors of past fires, floods and storms, Canada tends to rebound from natural disasters stronger than they were before, according to the Financial Post. In 1998, for example, when a devastating ice storm hit Ontario and Quebec, Canada's GDP dipped between 0.2 and 0.3 percent. But after those provinces finished rebuilding, the economy actually grew 0.1 percent for the entire year, CIBC World Markets told the Financial Post.

Even with a history of strong recovery, if the price tag is anywhere near what experts fear in Fort McMurray, a long road to recovery lies ahead for Alberta.

MORE ON WEATHER.COM: Fort McMurray Fire