John Vaillant documents the May 2016 wildfire that forced the total evacuation of Fort McMurray, the center of Canada’s bitumen industry. He explains how the physics of fire has changed due to increased carbon emissions and rising global temperatures, creating "fire weather" that allows blazes to generate their own localized atmospheric systems. The narrative follows the specific timeline of the disaster, detailing how convection columns and massive heat energy overwhelmed modern firefighting equipment. Vaillant connects the industrial process of extracting oil from the boreal forest to the atmospheric conditions that eventually fueled the city's destruction.
This book serves readers interested in climate science, resource extraction, and disaster management. Students of environmental history and urban planning will find detailed explanations of how wildland-urban interfaces become vulnerable to extreme heat. The reader finishes the text with a technical understanding of the chemistry of combustion and the specific ways a fossil-fuel-dependent economy alters the regional climate. It provides a sobering look at the mechanical forces driving modern natural disasters.
- Published
- 2023
- Language
- EN
