Wildfires are affecting us all now, even here in Northeast Ohio. Last summer the smoke from the Canadian fires drifted down to our airspace, setting off alerts to take caution and stay indoors. Around the world, heat waves have made people miserable, and not having air-conditioning is becoming a threat to life. What’s going on?
“Fire Weather: A True Story from a Hotter World” by John Vaillant is the account of the Fort McMurray Fire of May 2016 in Alberta, Canada. It was “the most expensive natural disaster in Canadian history” and was not declared fully extinguished until 15 months later. “Nearly 100,000 people were forced to flee in what remains the largest, most rapid single-day evacuation in the history of modern fire.”
Fort McMurray was “the epicenter of Canada’s multibillion-dollar petroleum industry,” a city filled with people who worked in the industry. It was located in the midst of the boreal forest, “a green wreath crowning the globe,” Vaillant writes. Parts of the forest burn and renew themselves regularly, but this was “a new kind of fire” in how it behaved. It was more than an out-of-control wildfire; it was “apocalyptic.”
This is a fascinating book. Along with this fire, the author recounts other big fires, along with the chemistry of fire, facts about the petrochemical industry, and the history of climate science, which goes back to 1856. He explains why “Across North America, and around the world, fires are burning over longer seasons and with greater intensity than at any other time in human history.”
The author tells us that fire weather is “the dynamic relationship between temperature, relative humidity, the fuel load in the forest, and the moisture content of that fuel load.” He goes on, “There is destructive fire, which burns down houses and forests, and then there’s transformative fire, which makes familiar objects — like houses — disappear altogether, and leaves whatever’s left — the cement foundation, the steel reinforcement rod holding it together — altered at the molecular level.”
Vaillant personalizes some of the town’s residents and firefighters, making the account even more readable; in fact, some of it is a definite thriller, with a killer worse than any high-tech monster: “Fire may not be alive or conscious in the sense that we are, and yet its behavior manifests a vitality, flexibility, and ambition often associated with intelligent animals,” he writes. The scenes of residents evacuating the city are harrowing, with “cars trapped in a corridor of fire, inching forward.”
The writing is first-rate: “A warm southeasterly wind then lifted that flame from its forest bed and, like a generous host with his hand on your back, urged that young fire to dine at will, with infinite appetite, upon the most abundant and explosive carbon buffet on Earth.”
In “The Heat Will Kill You First: Life and Death on a Scorched Planet,” author Jeff Goodell talks about “heat as an active force, one that can bend railroad tracks and kill you before you even understand that your life is at risk.” He writes that 489,000 people die annually worldwide from extreme heat and that “the Earth is getting hotter due to the burning of fossil fuels. This is a simple truth.”
This book is packed with interesting information. Goodell discusses the science of heat, how our bodies react to heat, how animals evolved heat adaptations, weather, loss of food productivity, money (“Extreme heat waves amped up by climate change have cost the global economy $16 trillion”), and climate change denial.
He details what’s happening in the Arctic, the Antarctic, the oceans; how heat is affecting glaciers, coastal areas; and the resulting effects on people, animals, and plants. “Extreme heat penetrates every living cell and melts them like a Popsicle on a summer sidewalk,” he writes. “Heat increases the metabolism of plants, just like it does in humans. It raises their heart rate, in effect. And that speeds up everything, including the need for water.”
Storms are more destructive, wildfires harder to put out, but “We are confronted simultaneously with our vulnerability to catastrophe and our profound unseriousness in the face of it. It’s as if the fires are starting to spread through Rome and all we can do is argue about the fiddling.”
If you prefer fiction, try “The Book of Fire” by Christy Lefteri (author of “The Beekeeper of Aleppo”). It’s an impressive, thoughtful, memorable novel of literary quality — with some exciting moments as well.
Irini and her quiet, artistic family live in present-day Greece. Her account begins five months after their entire village has been consumed by a forest fire. There are two narratives: what’s happening “now” and the memories she’s writing down.
She tells us she’s haunted by “the man I left to die.” He was a rich property developer the villagers called Mr. Monk. “None of us in the village liked him that much,” she admits, saying he “lacked humanity.” It was he who started the fire. “Mr. Monk stole the world. At least, the part of the world that I call my own.” But why would she do what she did? There’s more than one mystery surrounding his death.
Her family survived the fire, but her husband and her daughter, age 10, are both injured. Her husband is in a daze and hardly communicates with her. “He is far away,” she says, adding, “I thank the heavens that my daughter is alive. But she is a ghost of herself. The fire has stolen her, too.”
The writing is lovely, as when Irini describes the beginning of the fire: “And then the dog changed. It was very sudden, as if an invisible person had whispered something disturbing into its ear. Its ears went back, its tail down, and it whimpered. Something had frightened it. … They began to feel the heat. They felt it on their skin, in their eyes, in their lungs. The mother even felt the tingle of the gold necklace around her neck.” They ran down the hill to the sea, to escape the flames. “They went down down down as the heat pressed in on them, a colossal monster breathing flames just behind them.”
Enjoy the warmer weather, but try to stay cool!
Happy reading!
Mary Louise Ruehr is a books columnist for The Portager. Her One for the Books column previously appeared in the Record-Courier, where she was an editor.