Lessons from a wildfire that destroyed a city and burned for 15 months

Enlarge / The aftermath of the Fort McMurray fire. Katie Daubs

Editor's note: We have been informed that the draft form of the book that was reviewed contains significant errors. We take a closer look at the errors. We're leaving the piece in place for the time being, as it provides context for the discussion of this review in our reviews.

At noon on May 3, the fire chief for the oil town of Fort McMurray was on television telling everyone that the situation was in hand and that they should stay at work and school and go to little league or whatever as usual. He had been watching the fire for a few days, but business as usual was what they were doing in Alberta in the spring; it was forest fire season, after all. At 2:05 a.m. evacuation orders began to come in. At 10 p.m. that night, much of the city that had not yet been cremated was burning.

The combination of extremely high and record high temperatures (91°F) with extremely low humidity (15%), wind and tons of dry fuel created the perfect fire weather. While this explosive combination was previously inaccessible, it is occurring with increasing frequency around the world, including in areas that have never experienced wildfires before.

After destroying the city and the mines that fed it, the Fort McMurray fire lasted 15 months, until August 2, 2017. Fire Weather tells its story and tries to place -it in the context of our warming world.

Part One: Origin Stories

The book's biography and analysis of the fire begins with a background about bitumen (pronounced BITCH-amin), which is sand mixed with tar. It does not burn. It was traditionally used as an adhesive, for example in the Tower of Babel (Genesis 11:3). But Fort McMurray was built to harness it and convert it to electricity. Vaillant writes that it is so labor-intensive that the only way to make it remotely profitable as an energy source is through the conspiracy of heavy government subsidies and almost no regulation, oversight or penalties for emissions. Alberta was happy to provide all of this.

Vaillant goes on to describe how the oil industry is just the latest in a list of colonial, capitalist and extractive enterprises that have ravaged Western Canada. In the 18th century, the Hudson's Bay Company caused beavers to be hunted to near extinction because European men liked their pelts for top hats (they were shiny and water repellent) . In the 19th century, sea otters were hunted to near extinction because Chinese men traded their waterproof furs for tea, spices, silk and china that they could then return and sell in Europe and the United States. Bitumen mining near Fort McMurray began in 1967, and although it took a while to start generating profits, by the early 2000s oil companies from all over the world were present there, and it was a boom town.

Finally, it provides insight into fire itself as an entity and humanity's long and interdependent relationship with it. We extract and upgrade oil and gas — in Fort McMurray and elsewhere — just because it burns. They are stored, retarded fire. He describes fire as almost sentient and singular, with an insatiable need to burn fuel and grow.

Somewhat ironic, then, that the fire is spawned and reinforced by humanity's constant burning of fossil fuels in our own insatiable need to consume fuel and grow. It's almost like a vengeful deity saying, “Oh, you like burning stuff? Ok, we can burn stuff."

Part Two: Fire Time

Vaillant couldn't find enough superlatives to describe the power, the fury, the strength, the pure hell of this fire. It was the biggest, the smokiest, the widest, the tallest, the blackest. Never. Also, by far, in 2016, the hottest. This type of fire, only seen on Earth in the 21st century, has its own time; it generates hail, lightning and tornadoes, and its smoke reaches the stratosphere, 8 miles above the Earth's surface, changing its composition in measurable ways. It imitates volcanoes.

But the hellish landscape he has...