It's not like we're bracing for the next big fire in our region. Or maybe we are. We've already seen home destruction on a large scale, especially in the multiple fires of September 2020. The evacuations still pale by comparison with the nearly 90,000 people who had to flee a fire in Canada in one day in 2016.
The Fort McMurray fire was a monster in many ways. Canadian writer John Vaillant writes of the fire and the many contributing factors--Fort McMurray is in the heart of the Canadian tar sands--in the book Fire Weather: A True Story from a Hotter World. The author talks about fires and the petroleum industry and more, in this interview.