More fires inevitable

John Vaillant grew up in Massachusetts. So, he has a notion of what this place is normally like: “wet, rainy, and foggy … somewhere that never catches on fire.”

Which meant that he was taken aback to turn on the news and learn of the wildfires sweeping through Nova Scotia.

“I am shocked,” the Vancouverbased journalist and author told me Monday. “I sort of can’t believe it.” Up to a point.

What is happening here is happening most everywhere, he said. The world is burning. It has just taken a while for the flames to reach us.

“Do not delude yourself into thinking this is a one-off,” he warned. Then he proceeded to explain why.

Vaillant’s latest book, Fire Weather: The Making of a Beast, focuses on the 2016 wildfire in Fort Mcmurray, which struck so quickly and with such ferocity that it overran the city of 88,000 in a single day, created its own weather system and igniting fires far away.

When we spoke, he was on the other side of the country, but comments from Nova Scotia’s Department of Natural Resources — about our fires being out of control, and “a couple of rough days being ahead” — worried him because they involved real communities and because the words sounded almost exactly like the official updates coming before the awful fire that devastated Fort Mcmurray.

“The world is more flammable than it has ever been,” Vaillant said.

Not just in his home province of British Columbia — where evacuation notices for remote sections were issued on the weekend — or Alberta where wildfires have been raging for months.

But also in California, where State Farm Insurance has just announced that it will no longer insure new homes because of wildfire risks.

And even as far away as Australia, where wildfire smoke has influenced climate events around the world.

If there is one thing the seven years working on this book taught Vaillant it is that “climate change is always a step ahead of us. It constantly surprises us. It does things that are always beyond the imagination.”

Like set a province, surrounded by ocean, and known for its “mountains dark and dreary” ablaze.

PERFECT FIRE CONDITIONS

All the conditions were in place for the weekend’s conflagrations across Nova Scotia. The combination of unseasonably hot and dry weather, along with heavy winds, “is like gasoline for a modern forest,” he said.

The danger is even greater in the area he calls the wildland urban interface, where half of Canadians live, like those subdivisions outside of Halifax which burst into flame on Sunday.

The suddenness and ferocity with which the wildfires struck is nothing new to the residents of Western Canada, California, or “those other select communities being initiated into the future before the rest of us.”

Our relentless burning of fossil fuels is at the root of it. They release large amounts of carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas, into the air, trapping heat in our atmosphere.

Global warming exacerbates the hot, dry conditions that bring the kind of drought and heat waves that make wildfires catch and spread.

“The landscape is telling all of us: I am on fire. I am so hot that the moisture my soil normally has is evaporating,” Vaillant said. “It is the chickens (of excess CO2 accumulation) coming home to roost.

‘21ST CENTURY FIRE’

The hotter and drier the world, the fiercer and more volatile the wildfires that are ignited, a phenomenon he calls “21st century fire,” since the trend only became apparent in the new century.

The weekend blazes across Nova Scotia — which, he said, “weren’t there one moment and were the next” — seemed to fall into that category.

In their wake, they leave devastated lives: homes gone, livelihoods disappeared, communities changed forever.

Vaillant’s research has shown him that 21st century fire also has a psychological impact.

“In those Alberta communities, some people who returned never felt safe again,” he said.

From his own experience with the British Columbia wildfires he added,” they mess with your head. The sky is orange. The birds no longer sing.”

The upshot is the kind of existential despair and uncertainty that can be hard to take on the heels of a pandemic.

His counsel then is simple: stop burning fossil fuels. In the meantime, learn from those communities that have already seen modern-day wildfires.

In his book Fire Weather, the volunteer fire department of Slave Lake, Alberta — which in 2011 lost its town hall, and 500 houses in a few hours — acts as a Greek Chorus, warning Fort Mcmurray what could happen if a firestorm hits.

“It is human nature not to pay attention when you don’t think something can happen to you,” he said.

Now we know. Now, hopefully, we can be even more ready for the next time.