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Boundary Waters / Quetico Discussion Forums >> The Bookshelf >> "Fire Weather" by John Valliant
https://quietjourney.com/community/YABB.cgi?num=1706727244 Message started by Jimbo on Jan 31st, 2024 at 6:54pm |
Title: Re: "Fire Weather" by John Valliant Post by Jimbo on Feb 1st, 2024 at 11:57pm
Materials used in the construction of homes are so much more flammable than ever before. I was amazed to learn to what extent petrochemicals are used with building materials versus homes in the old days. Also, forest where black spruce is predominant (or has a heavy presence) are particularly capable of burning hot. Where those type forests and green zones merge into Wilderness Urban Interface areas, the explosiveness potential of the fire goes WAY up. Houses in Fort McMurray (a city of 100,000+) were consumed in less than 5 minutes time per house. When you couple record setting extremely low humidity and record heat with a fire that generates its own weather (pyro-cumulus storms sending burning debris over a quarter mile &, sometimes, a LOT further), the results are devastating. Northern forests are becoming tinder boxes. Firefighters can't stay ahead of the fires. In the case of Fort McMurray, hundreds of secondary fires advanced with the wind & topography and merged with the original fire and houses were exploding all around the firefighters. They had to give up on fighting it on a traditional house-to-house basis and try to create neutral zones by bulldozing whole neighborhoods of houses in the basements of homes... and that strategy only had limited success.
The Fort McMurray fire scorched thousands of square miles and cost untold billions of dollars & wrecked thousands of lives (the mass exodus due to an environmental disaster in North America is rivalled only by New Orleans and Hurricane Katrina). Yet this paled in size comparison to the fires of 2023. Ugh. There have been verified "fire tornados" in California & Australia in recent years (imagine flaming hurricane-force winds), a weather phenomenon that has never been seen before. Between June 25th to July 2nd, 2021, it reached 121 degrees in British Columbia and resulted in 562 deaths. Things are getting truly weird. John Valliant's book does a great job of laying it all out there and explaining what is involved. It's an absolutely fascinating read. Sadly, I fear there will be a lot more orange skies in our futures and, especially, in the lives of our grandchildren, as boreal forests become ever more arid. Jimbo 8-) |
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