It’s only April and predictions are being made for another record setting wildfire season across the country.
I had the opportunity in 2023 to sit down with Vancouver's award-winning writer John Valiant in a podcast interview to discuss his seven-year journey researching the 2016 Fort McMurray wildfire, a devastating event that shook Canada to its core.
The book is “Fire Weather, the Making of a beast”.
Vaillant talked about a stark reminder from Exxon's scientists, who predicted the current climate predicaments decades ago, suggesting that the rise in CO2 levels would significantly affect our temperature and fire behavior around the year 2000. His insights into the boreal forest's fire ecology and its phoenix-like regeneration process are both fascinating and terrifying as he describes the forest's inherent flammability.
In the podcast, Vaillant paints a vivid picture of the Fort McMurray fire, which raged uncontrollably despite the best efforts of elite firefighters and advanced suppression techniques. He shares harrowing stories of neighbourhoods reduced to nails, the transformation of homes into combustible materials, and the overwhelming sense of loss experienced by the community and first responders.
Over 200,000 Canadians were forced to evacuate their homes during the summer of 2023.
As Valiant reflects on the broader implications of these fires, he touches upon the significant role of the insurance industry, which, based on the accumulation of data, has begun to shift away from supporting high-emission fossil fuel projects. This move underscores the economic and ethical awakening that's sweeping across industries in response to climate change.
For anyone interested in understanding the real-world consequences of climate change and the future of our planet, I think you will find this episode with John Valiant very interesting.
(01:41) The boreal forest is the biggest terrestrial ecosystem in Canada
(03:54) The horse river fire ignited sometime in the mid afternoon of May 1, 2016
(11:47) Many of the communities affected by wildfires this year have been close to nature
(14:23) Wildfire for Canadians now is really a national security threat
(16:03) You wrote about the 911 system collapsing in Fort McMurray during evacuation
(19:26) Fort McMurray ran out of food quickly after fire
(22:40) One of the fallouts from wildfires is particulate, which can affect health
(27:37) Fire tornado is a new phenomenon linked to climate change
(33:00) Climate change