As I write this, B.C. is sending wildfire professional to help California fight wildfire “beasts” there. This is a good idea: these agreements with neighbouring jurisdictions. We always learn something since the science and practice of warring with fire is evolving.
I use the word “beast” as it became common during the Fort McMurray fire which overran America’s biggest foreign petroleum supplier in May 2016. Front line details of that fire have been captured by John Vaillant in his book, Fire Weather: the Making if a Beast, 2023.
I heard him speak in Smithers before Christmas. This is great history of fire and mankind. But it also comments on the interface between municipal structural (buildings) fire departments and the forest service wildfire – both “command and control” management organizations during fire crises.
Crises are not democratic (bottom up, dialogue ridden) times and events. The time for wider community and public decision-making and consensus building is the slower non-fire season, if your jurisdiction is fortunate enough to have one.
This eloquent book is a call to greater awareness about the interaction between climate shifts, weather changes and impact of drought on fire behaviour.
Some reports coming out of California suggest that the dramatic rains that followed years of drought have created a lot of growth of brush which became fuel on the landscape. And, water shortages for firefighting seem to be at least partially caused by inadequate infrastructure such as pipelines and storage in aquifers and lakes.
The lesson for all of us is to conserve and enhance the infrastructure for water management in case more of the inevitable fires plague us.
This morning (Jan 14,2025) the Globe and Mail, a major Canadian news service, reported extensively on insurance, energy companies’ and nations responses to record payouts on insurance claims. The Globe was motivated by the situation in California.
The subtext of the story is “Why climate change is finding new life as ‘risk assessment’. ” National disaster claims in Canada hit $8.5 billion. This led to a discussion about the possibility that many homes and businesses may not get insurance for flood, fire and weather damage.
In 2007, the Stern report (retired British finance minister) said it will cost one per cent of governments’ Gross Domestic Product(GDP) if climate change was addressed immediately. Waiting a decade or so would make that cost 10 per cent of GDP. We are seeing greater and greater cost to government, businesses, home and farm owners from natural disasters.
To bring this home to us here in the central interior of B.C.: we are not immune to these risks!
As we plan and manage our businesses and home places, we must address these risks, and we know many large corporations in our supply chains and those that finance our debt and government debt are looking to manage their risk.
That may mean not insuring to the historical levels.
