These days, something’s always burning: A fire season preview

In today’s The Big Story podcast, evacuation alerts for several communities in B.C. and Alberta are in effect. You may not have noticed, because evacuation alerts are always in effect now, and fires are always burning. But the whole country takes notice when skies over entire provinces go dark, the air turns bad or a blaze like the Fort McMurray fire in 2016 blitzes through a city. All of that will probably happen this year.

“I think of these moments that we’re in right now as a series of invisible thresholds and we’re crossing it with sea ice, we’re crossing it with sea temperature we’re crossing it with fire behaviour,” said John Vaillant, the author of Fire Weather: The Making of a Beast. 

There’s not much we can do to prevent a devastating fire when it comes, but we can evolve our strategies as the fires get bigger. So how have fires increased since the Fort McMurray fire in 2016? How should we be adapting to bigger fires? And what can we expect for the wildfire season this year, in 2024

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