Why Humans Keep Making Wildfires Worse
Fort McMurray was the capital of the Canadian tar sands boom, a small place in the environmental moonscape of the rising petro-state of Alberta. Unfortunately, oil prices have crashed and now Fort McMurray seems to be burning down. From The Canadian Press:
An earlier order that had applied to almost 30,000 people, mostly on the city's south side, was extended to tens of thousands more as hungry flames continued to eat their way into the city. The wildfire, whipped by unpredictable winds on a day when the temperature reached 32 C, worsened dramatically in a short time and many residents had little notice to flee. Towers of bright-orange flames cut through the clouds and skipped over tinder-dry forest. Alberta Premier Rachel Notley said the province was doing all it could to ensure everyone's safety. She said she was looking into the possibility of an airlift for residents with medical issues.
Fort McMurray was a sleepy little river town until the tar-sands industry came to Alberta. It brought the town a new $250 million airport and a shiny new stadium. Soon, if you counted permanent residents and the people who lived in the various tar-sends work camps, the population of Fort McMurray had pushed past 100,000. When oil prices deflated, so did the bubble that was the local economy. The people who stayed are now running for their lives, and the descriptions provided by the evacuees sound like nothing more than the accounts of the survivors of the great wildfire in Peshtigo, Wisconsin in 1871:
Resident Mark Durocher, 25, described the air as "thick." "If you just walk outside, you feel it (ash) falling on you. You see it floating in the air. I can take a broom and brush it off my deck," said Durocher. "You can taste it and feel it when you're walking around. It feels really heavy and you can taste just how 'woody' it is in the air."… Sandra Hickey, who lives in a neighbourhood under an evacuation order, said the situation changed quite suddenly. "When I got in the shower earlier today the sky was blue. When I got out, the sky was black," said Hickey, who had to leave her home. "It was fast. The wind picked up and changed direction."
The situation in Fort McMurray was exacerbated by extremely dry conditions. This also was the case in Peshtigo, where overlogging left so much wooden debris on the forest floor that flames riding the high, hot winds found a natural kind of tinder. A survivor named Martha Coon wrote to her sister:
Oh Mary, it was truly a night of horror, it rained fire; the air was on fire; some thought the last day had come…
In both cases, severe environmental damage contributed to the intensity of the fire and the breadth of the destruction. Right now, 80,000 people have to evacuate Fort McMurray and they seem to be managing it. At least, in the 145 years since Peshtigo, we've gotten better at that.
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