I finished “Fire Weather” by John Vaillant at the very beginning of 2024.  Although it did not rate high enough to be one of my favorite books for 2024, it is a book that I have referenced many times in the last year.  The massively destructive fires in Los Angeles that have been in the news, despite the frigid weather in the other parts of the country, brought it to mind again.

In “Fire Weather“, John Vaillant explores the intersection of a hotter climate and the use of fossil fuels.  He writes a fascinating and detailed account of the Fort McMurray fire in Canada in 2016.

In May 2016, Fort McMurray, the hub of Canada’s oil industry and America’s biggest foreign supplier, was overrun by wildfire. The multi-billion-dollar disaster melted vehicles and turned entire neighborhoods into firebombs.  88,000 people had to abandon their homes in a single afternoon. Through the lens of this conflagration, John Vaillant warns that this was not a unique event.  He warns that we must prepare for more of these fires in a hotter, more flammable world.

North America’s oil industry and climate science are inextricably intertwined.  Fires are getting hotter and more explosive as our climate warms.  Firefighters need new tools and strategies to battle these infernos.  All of this is laid out in a thoughtful and compelling story.

The book explained all of the science around these firestorms in a clear way meant for the non-scientist to understand.  Valliant detailed what makes these new wildfires so deadly, hot, and destructive.  They are more like a bomb going off in the midst of climate change than a simple wildfire.  And the fires will only grow more devastating in the future.

I found the book to be helpful in understanding why fires are so much more destructive than in the past.  We ignore the changes in our environment at our peril.  These fires in Los Angeles were predictable and inevitable.  We continue to build cities in unsustainable ways and should not be surprised when nature fights back.  “Fire Weather” explains and predicts how the future will unfold.