At noon on May 3rd, the fire chief of the oil town of Fort McMurray was on television telling everyone that the situation was serious and that people should stay at work, school and go to Little League or whatever as usual. He watched the fires for several days, but business was as usual in Alberta in the spring. After all, it was wildfire season. Evacuation orders began to be issued at 2:05. By ten o’clock that night, much of the city that had not yet been burned began to burn.
The combination of record-breaking extreme heat (91°F), record-breaking extreme low humidity (15 percent), wind and copious amounts of dry fuel made for the perfect fire weather. This explosive combination was once unfeasible, but is becoming more frequent around the world, including in areas where wildfires have never occurred before.
The Fort McMurray fire continued to burn for 15 months until August 2, 2017 after destroying mines that burned the city and everything around it. fire weather tells that story and tries to place it in the context of a warming world.
Part 1: Origin Story
The book’s biography and fire analysis begins with some background on sand-tarred asphalt (pronounced bithamine). Not burnable. It was traditionally used as an adhesive, such as in the Tower of Babel (Genesis 11:3). But Fort McMurray was built to mine it and convert it into electricity. Vaillant said that would require so much effort that the only way it could be remotely monetized as an energy source would be the collusion of massive government subsidies and the regulation, monitoring and regulation of emissions. writes that it is an almost complete lack of penalties. Alberta was happy to provide all of this.
Vaillant went on to explain how the oil industry is just the latest on the list of colonialism, capitalism and mining operations that have ravaged western Canada. In the 18th century, the Hudson’s Bay Company ensured that the beaver was virtually extinct. European men preferred top hat fur (It was also glossy and water repellent). In the 19th century, sea otters were virtually extinct. Chinese men traded their waterproof furs for tea, spices, silk and porcelain that could be sold in Europe and the United States. Asphalt mining near Fort McMurray began in 1967 and took time to become profitable, but by the early 2000s oil companies around the world were based there and there was a periodic boom. became a city.
Finally, he provides background on fire itself as an entity and the long and interdependent relationship between mankind and fire. We extract and appreciate oil and gas at Fort McMurray and elsewhere because it burns. They are stored and delayed ignition. He explains that fire is mostly sentient, singular in focus, and has only an insatiable desire to consume fuel and grow.
It is therefore somewhat ironic that fire is generated and strengthened by mankind’s insatiable desire to consume and grow by burning fossil fuels. It’s as if the God of Vengeance is saying, “You guys like burning things?” All right, you can burn things. ”
Part 2: Fire Weather
Vaillant could not find enough superlative words to describe the power, fury, intensity, pure hellishness of this fire. It was the biggest, smoky, widest, tallest and blackest. ever. 2016 was also by far the hottest. This kind of fire is only found on his 21st century Earth and creates its own weather. It produces hail, lightning, and tornadoes, and its smoke reaches the stratosphere eight miles above the surface, visibly altering its composition. It mimics a volcano.
However, the hellscapes he paints are not isolated from the natural world. That would be too easy a dichotomy. more like a dam. It is part of this world because we exist and we made it.
One of the reasons this particular fire was so vicious is that, like most modern homes, Fort McMurray’s homes were built almost entirely from petroleum-based products, or fuels. Vinyl siding, polyurethane furniture, polyester clothing, plastic toys. Houses valued at over $500,000 were burned in about three minutes, leaving nothing but the nuts and bolts that held them together.
The trees around them exploded, sending embers soaring and further fires starting miles away. Their backyard had a grill attached to a propane tank outdoors. In their garage he had ATVs and pickups, his trucks, snowmobiles and boats, each with its own fuel tank, many of which contained hunting ammunition. All this exploded as 90,000 residents fled out of town via a single highway. Because they are predominantly white, Christian, and hail from the northern countries, they do not match our usual image of climate change refugees. But Vaillant points out precisely that this is exactly what they were. Surprisingly, really surprisingly, no one died or was seriously injured (i.e. physically).
Fort McMurray was not lost due to lack of leadership, lack of coordination, expertise, experience, data or fortitude. Vaillant stresses that it was lost due to a lack of imagination. Risk analyst Nassim Taleb identified this as the Lucretian problem, after the Roman poet and philosopher who wrote the problem in the 1st century BC.
Yes, and any river is huge if it is the greatest river man has ever seen
No one has ever seen anything better than this…
and each imagines all sorts of all things as gigantic
The greatest thing he’s ever seen…
Firefighters at Fort McMurray hadn’t seen a fire like that in many years, nor could they have imagined a fire of such magnitude, allowing the fire to last two days. Despite observing the weather, he did not believe there would be a fire. They controlled the fire at Fort McMurray. That’s all the town has done. That’s what it was made for. The people there couldn’t put their minds to the fires that were out of their control.
Firefighters at Slave Lake, four hours to the southwest, had He witnessed such a fire and attempted to warn his colleagues at Fort McMurray. The Fort McMurray Fire Department did not go unheard of these warnings. That is, their voices were not heard.
Vaillant cites several biblical references, especially since Fort McMurray was a fairly evangelical town, and uses the language of flowers as appropriate for the apocalyptic situation (breathing is the “biochemical of hope”). analogues”, and the fires were “letting out embers like incendiary bombs”) confetti”). He also mentions Mordor and Balrog quite a bit, and Tim Horton quite often. (I get it. You’re in Canada.) All the content veers in the direction of disaster porn, but given the subject matter, it would be hard not to.
