Firestorm: How Wildfire Will Shape Our Future"Frightening...Firestorm comes alive when Struzik discusses the work of offbeat scientists." —New York Times Book Review "Comprehensive and compelling." —Booklist "A powerful message." —Kirkus "Should be required reading." —Library Journal For two months in the spring of 2016, the world watched as wildfire ravaged the Canadian town of Fort McMurray. Firefighters named the fire “the Beast.” It acted like a mythical animal, alive with destructive energy, and they hoped never to see anything like it again. Yet it’s not a stretch to imagine we will all soon live in a world in which fires like the Beast are commonplace. A glance at international headlines shows a remarkable increase in higher temperatures, stronger winds, and drier lands– a trifecta for igniting wildfires like we’ve rarely seen before. This change is particularly noticeable in the northern forests of the United States and Canada. These forests require fire to maintain healthy ecosystems, but as the human population grows, and as changes in climate, animal and insect species, and disease cause further destabilization, wildfires have turned into a potentially uncontrollable threat to human lives and livelihoods. Our understanding of the role fire plays in healthy forests has come a long way in the past century. Despite this, we are not prepared to deal with an escalation of fire during periods of intense drought and shorter winters, earlier springs, potentially more lightning strikes and hotter summers. There is too much fuel on the ground, too many people and assets to protect, and no plan in place to deal with these challenges. In Firestorm, journalist Edward Struzik visits scorched earth from Alaska to Maine, and introduces the scientists, firefighters, and resource managers making the case for a radically different approach to managing wildfire in the 21st century. Wildfires can no longer be treated as avoidable events because the risk and dangers are becoming too great and costly. Struzik weaves a heart-pumping narrative of science, economics, politics, and human determination and points to the ways that we, and the wilder inhabitants of the forests around our cities and towns, might yet flourish in an age of growing megafires. |
Contents
Introduction | 1 |
The Beast Awakens | 17 |
Inside the Mind of a Wildfire | 57 |
A History of Fire Suppression | 81 |
Visions of the Pyrocene | 103 |
Water on Fire | 127 |
The Big Smoke | 141 |
Drought Disease Insects and Wildfire | 163 |
Fire on Ice | 181 |
Agent of Change | 205 |
Resilience and Recovery | 215 |
Conclusion | 231 |
Acknowledgments | 245 |
Notes | 249 |
IP Board of Directors | 259 |
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Common terms and phrases
air tanker Alaska Alberta Arctic arsenic asbestos aspen Banff big fire boreal forest British Columbia burning bigger Canadian Forest Service caribou climate change colleagues Coutts Creek fire crew drought ecosystem environmental evacuation fighting fires fire behavior fire burned fire managers fire season fire suppression fire that burned firefighters Forest Fire Fort McMurray fuel Glacier going grizzly bears happened Hayman fire Heathcott helicopter homes Horse River fire hotter Idaho ignited insects Jasper Juday kilometers Kootenay Kubian landscape Libby lightning living look McMurray fire mercury Mike Flannigan miles Montana mountain pine beetle National Park northern forests Northwest Territories nuclear winter oil sands owls Parks Canada percent permafrost prescribed burn RCMP region Rockies Rupp scientists Silins Slave Lake smoke soil species spruce summer temperatures told town trees tundra United watersheds weather wildfire wildfire science Wildland Fire wildlife winds Wood Buffalo Yellowstone Yukon