One for the Books: The world’s on fire!

Wildfires are affecting us all now, even here in Northeast Ohio. Last summer the smoke from the Canadian fires drifted down to our airspace, setting off alerts to take caution and stay indoors. Around the world, heat waves have made people miserable, and not having air-conditioning is becoming a threat to life. What’s going on?

“Fire Weather: A True Story from a Hotter World” by John Vaillant is the account of the Fort McMurray Fire of May 2016 in Alberta, Canada. It was “the most expensive natural disaster in Canadian history” and was not declared fully extinguished until 15 months later. “Nearly 100,000 people were forced to flee in what remains the largest, most rapid single-day evacuation in the history of modern fire.”