Several years ago, I drove through an area of California that had been ravaged by wildfire—an experience that left me profoundly shaken. Mile after desolate mile stretched before me, revealing nothing but the skeletal remains of once-majestic trees, their blackened husks standing like monuments to nature's destructive power. I understand that wildfires are an intrinsic part of the natural cycle. I also recognize the paradox that our well-intentioned fire suppression efforts often accumulate the very tinder that fuels even more catastrophic fires. Even so, I cannot help but feel a profound melancholy whenever news reaches me of the colossal fires that periodically devastate the wilderness of Canada, Australia and countless other regions across the world and that in recent years have become more frequent.
In Fire Weather. A True Story From a Hotter World John Vaillant tells the harrowing story of the 2016 wildfire that devastated Fort McMurray, Alberta, a city of 90,000 people built to service Canada's tar sands operations. The book presents this catastrophic event as both a gripping disaster narrative and a profound allegory for climate change. Fort McMurray, which produces about 40% of American oil imports through its massive bitumen extraction operations, represents the paradox of our modern world: a community that both creates and suffers from the forces driving global warming. The fire, initially designated MWF-009 but later dubbed "the Beast," began as a small brush fire on May 1, 2016, but grew exponentially under unprecedented conditions of extreme heat and drought.
The book vividly chronicles how climate change created the perfect conditions for this unprecedented wildfire. In May 2016, temperatures soared into the high 80s—almost 30 degrees above normal—while humidity levels dropped to desert-like conditions. These extreme weather patterns, combined with years of below-average snowfall, created what Vaillant describes as conditions "as conducive to fire as is possible anywhere on Earth." The fire demonstrated terrifying new behaviors, generating its own weather systems complete with hurricane-force winds and lightning, and spreading with a ferocity that overwhelmed traditional firefighting methods. Within days, it had crossed the Athabasca River and forced the evacuation of 88,000 people, ultimately burning 2,500 square miles over 15 months.
Vaillant draws extensively on modern digital resources—cellphone videos, dashboard cameras, security footage, and social media posts—to create an intimate, moment-by-moment account of the disaster. He describes the apocalyptic scenes as a clear blue sky was suddenly obliterated by towering black clouds, transforming day into night, and chronicles the sounds of exploding gas tanks and propane grills as the fire ripped through neighborhoods. The book captures both the heroic efforts of firefighters and ordinary citizens, as well as the tragic delays and denial by authorities who were slow to grasp the magnitude of the threat. Despite the chaos and the complete destruction of entire neighborhoods, remarkably no one died directly from the fire during the evacuation of 90,000 people.
The narrative reveals how modern construction materials made the disaster even more catastrophic than historical fires. Unlike homes of the past filled with natural materials, today's houses are constructed largely from petroleum-based products—vinyl siding, synthetic furniture, plastic composites—that burn with extraordinary intensity. Vaillant notes that modern homes are essentially "composed almost entirely of petroleum products," causing them to vaporize rather than simply burn. This created a feedback loop where the very industry that Fort McMurray was built to serve—oil extraction—had filled the city with the materials that would fuel its own destruction. The irony is both literal and symbolic: a city built on fossil fuel extraction was consumed by a fire intensified by both climate change and petroleum-based materials.
Fire Weather ultimately serves as both a compelling disaster story and an urgent warning about our climate future. Vaillant argues that the Fort McMurray fire represents a new reality in which fires burn "over longer seasons and with greater intensity than at any other time in human history." In the years since the Fort McMurray fire parts of Canada, Australia, California and Greece have been hit by even larger, more devastating fires.