The wildfire that devastated Fort McMurray in 2016 burned more than 579,000 hectares of land, drove 88,000 people from their homes and caused nearly $10 billion in damages. It’s often seen as an outlier, a freak natural disaster. But extreme wildfires, like those that tore through Los Angeles earlier this year, are becoming more intense and harder to control. “We all saw the smoke, and too many of us have seen the fire,” says John Vaillant, author of Fire Weather: The Making of a Beast. “Weather is different now, and fire is different now.” Hotter, drier weather is turning our forests into kindling, and emergency responders are struggling to handle our new reality: intense, unpredictable fires fuelled by a changing climate. In this special episode, host Manjula Selvarajah sits down with Vaillant to better understand how we got here and to see if there is any way out.

Featured in this episode:

John Vaillant is a Vancouver-based author and freelance journalist. His latest work, the Pulitzer Prize–nominated Fire Weather: The Making of a Beast, chronicles how the 2016 Fort McMurray wildfire turned entire neighbourhoods into firebombs and destroyed 2,400 homes and businesses.

Further reading:

• Forged by fire: Fort McMurray 5 years after the disaster
• Canada needs to get ready for a future fraught with fire: How can the forest sector respond?
• FACT SHEET: Climate change and wildfires
• Canada’s 2023 wildfires emitted more carbon than most countries
• Landscapes turned into hellscapes, shock and the ongoing fight against wildfires in Los Angeles
• Los Angeles wildfires magnify California’s “insurance crisis” as homeowners face billions in losses

Subscribe to Solve for X: Innovations to Change the World here. And below, find a transcript to “Fire alarm: Rethinking innovation in an increasingly volatile world.” This interview was recorded at MaRS Climate Impact on December 4, 2024.

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