WEBVTT - Drilling Deep: John Vaillant on the Climate-Fire Nexus 0:00:06.920 --> 0:00:12.000 Hello and welcome back to Drilled. I'm Amy Westervelt. Quite 0:00:12.039 --> 0:00:15.400 a start to the year here. If you haven't already 0:00:15.440 --> 0:00:18.880 listened to it, I recommend going back and listening to 0:00:19.040 --> 0:00:22.239 our season on Guyana. It has a lot to do 0:00:22.400 --> 0:00:27.800 with what's happening in Venezuela right now and in other news. Unfortunately, 0:00:27.880 --> 0:00:31.280 the episode that we're bringing to you today is quite timely. 0:00:31.880 --> 0:00:36.120 Our Australia reporter Royce Kermelov's spoke with Canadian author John 0:00:36.200 --> 0:00:40.040 Valent at the Byron Ryders Festival last year about John's 0:00:40.080 --> 0:00:43.559 book Fire Weather. We were already planning to bring you 0:00:43.600 --> 0:00:47.239 that conversation this week, but now the entire state of 0:00:47.320 --> 0:00:51.879 Victoria is under an extreme fire danger warning. It's bringing 0:00:51.920 --> 0:00:56.000 back memories of the terrible fire season in Australia just 0:00:56.040 --> 0:00:59.279 a few years back. There are spotfires burning in New 0:00:59.320 --> 0:01:02.760 South Wales and South Australia as well. So I can't 0:01:02.760 --> 0:01:05.720 think of a better time to bring you this conversation. 0:01:06.240 --> 0:01:43.720 Hope you enjoy it. Here it is. 0:01:27.959 --> 0:01:30.800 Hello and welcome to the two pm session here at 0:01:30.800 --> 0:01:33.520 Byron Ryers Festival. I am royce Kermelovs. I will be 0:01:33.560 --> 0:01:38.280 your host for the session. I'm very excited to be 0:01:38.319 --> 0:01:40.600 here today with you to talk about this wonderfully written 0:01:40.600 --> 0:01:43.440 book that is both exquisitely written and, as one writer 0:01:43.520 --> 0:01:47.040 for The New York Times described it, unfortunately exquisitely timed. 0:01:47.600 --> 0:01:50.800 The book is Fireweather, a true story from a hotter world, 0:01:50.800 --> 0:01:53.400 which you can see here I'm holding up very conveniently. 0:01:53.920 --> 0:01:56.200 The story it tells us about a Canadian oil town 0:01:56.320 --> 0:01:59.800 that experienced a catastrophic bushfire in twenty sixteen. And though 0:02:00.080 --> 0:02:02.440 it describes events a world away, for many of us 0:02:02.520 --> 0:02:06.120 here in Australia, it'll be deeply familiar and for many 0:02:06.120 --> 0:02:07.240 people in this region. 0:02:08.000 --> 0:02:09.040 And this. 0:02:10.400 --> 0:02:14.320 Powerfully drawn book is about many things. It's harrowing, it's 0:02:14.600 --> 0:02:17.880 about fire, it's about climate change, and it's about the 0:02:17.880 --> 0:02:21.040 particular talent for self harm that we as a species 0:02:21.080 --> 0:02:24.240 appear to show for ourselves. The author of this fine 0:02:24.240 --> 0:02:26.519 book is John Valiant, who is here with me today. 0:02:26.560 --> 0:02:28.640 And for those who don't know whom, John is an 0:02:28.639 --> 0:02:30.919 author and a writer and has traveled halfway around the 0:02:30.960 --> 0:02:32.400 world to be here. So could you please all make 0:02:32.480 --> 0:02:40.200 him for warmly welcome Mbayron Bay. And just before we 0:02:40.240 --> 0:02:42.160 get into it, I want to be just heads up. 0:02:42.160 --> 0:02:45.040 We will be taking questions in this session, so in 0:02:45.040 --> 0:02:48.240 about forty five minutes a volunteer will come around with 0:02:48.240 --> 0:02:50.240 a microphone. So if you have your questions, hold on 0:02:50.280 --> 0:02:52.919 to them to then we do ask that the questions 0:02:52.960 --> 0:02:55.040 are a question and you know you're going to keep 0:02:55.040 --> 0:02:56.520 them short so we can get as many in as 0:02:56.560 --> 0:02:59.000 possible to kind of get as much good information as 0:02:59.000 --> 0:03:01.520 we can out. And if you want to have more 0:03:01.520 --> 0:03:03.560 of a conversation with John, you're more than welcome to 0:03:03.600 --> 0:03:05.480 do so. I wrote the book, signing tent with a 0:03:05.560 --> 0:03:09.440 copy of the book when after the show, So John, 0:03:09.480 --> 0:03:11.920 I wanted to kind of open this conversation with you 0:03:12.320 --> 0:03:15.320 by asking the question, I mean, there are many fires 0:03:16.160 --> 0:03:19.959 in many places, but what drew you to this one? 0:03:20.840 --> 0:03:23.680 Yes. First of all, I would like to say thanks 0:03:23.680 --> 0:03:27.320 to the Tasmanian Walking Company and also to all of you. 0:03:27.880 --> 0:03:31.760 I'm really glad to be here with you. And also 0:03:31.800 --> 0:03:33.960 I have to say off the top, I feel rather 0:03:34.000 --> 0:03:39.200 sheepish coming to Australia to talk about fire when Australia 0:03:39.520 --> 0:03:42.200 has kind of written the book on fire in many ways, 0:03:42.240 --> 0:03:45.320 and a lot of us are up north are learning 0:03:45.360 --> 0:03:49.160 from you and watching and fascination and horror you know, 0:03:49.280 --> 0:03:52.880 as you reach new heights of flammability. But we're keeping 0:03:52.920 --> 0:03:57.240 pace up in Canada. We're doing our part. And Fort McMurray, 0:03:57.280 --> 0:04:00.400 which caught on fire in May on May through twenty 0:04:00.440 --> 0:04:04.760 sixteen and drove the largest most rapid evacuation due to 0:04:04.840 --> 0:04:08.920 fire in modern times, caught my attention before any of 0:04:08.960 --> 0:04:13.640 us knew that really, because it disappeared from the face 0:04:13.680 --> 0:04:16.640 of the earth for a while, and I was I'm 0:04:16.640 --> 0:04:20.159 not a climate journalist. I'd write about every book is 0:04:20.200 --> 0:04:22.960 about a different subject. I've written about aman eating tiger 0:04:22.960 --> 0:04:26.720 in Russia and a botanically unique tree in British Columbia 0:04:26.760 --> 0:04:29.760 and other things. But so fire was not really on 0:04:29.800 --> 0:04:32.640 my radar. And I was working on a novel and 0:04:32.760 --> 0:04:36.159 in Italy at a very swank writer's retreat and made 0:04:36.240 --> 0:04:41.119 the mistake of looking at Twitter and this petroleum hub 0:04:41.240 --> 0:04:45.839 of Canada. Canada's the fourth or fifth largest petroleum producer 0:04:45.880 --> 0:04:49.159 in the world, and the hub of that industry had 0:04:49.160 --> 0:04:55.280 completely disappeared beneath a forty thousand foot tall pyrocumulonimbus fire cloud. 0:04:55.960 --> 0:04:58.840 And that was on May third, twenty sixteen, and nobody 0:04:58.920 --> 0:05:02.200 knew there were a ninety thousand people in there. You 0:05:02.200 --> 0:05:05.080 can see the cars streaming out. There's only one road out. 0:05:05.760 --> 0:05:09.440 They were streaming out like ants to the horizon, and 0:05:09.520 --> 0:05:12.840 nobody knew who was left in there, and nobody knew 0:05:12.839 --> 0:05:15.080 for days. It was really frightening. Kind of at a 0:05:15.160 --> 0:05:21.640 national level, it's a nationally important city. It is home 0:05:21.720 --> 0:05:24.280 to the highest wages in the whole city. I think 0:05:24.279 --> 0:05:26.479 you have some of that here. There's you have a 0:05:26.480 --> 0:05:29.520 great name for it, the pilberl, the uh okay and 0:05:30.120 --> 0:05:33.360 the name for the people who make spectacular wages working there. 0:05:33.360 --> 0:05:35.160 But oh, yes, the cashed out bogains. 0:05:35.160 --> 0:05:37.280 I think it's yeah, yeah, the cashed out boguins. Well, 0:05:37.600 --> 0:05:42.080 this is what Fort McMurray is famous for. And the 0:05:42.240 --> 0:05:45.680 median household income there, even after a global downturn in 0:05:45.760 --> 0:05:49.520 petroleum prices, was two hundred thousand dollars a year, making 0:05:49.520 --> 0:05:52.839 it one of the wealthiest municipalities in all of North America. 0:05:53.279 --> 0:05:56.400 And that's including you know, Marin County and Westchester, New York. 0:05:57.120 --> 0:05:59.920 So it's a very very powerful place in the idea 0:06:00.080 --> 0:06:02.159 that it could be wiped off the face of the 0:06:02.200 --> 0:06:07.200 earth in an afternoon was deeply threatening and terrifying. And 0:06:10.000 --> 0:06:15.120 I dropped the novel and started paying attention so on that. 0:06:15.200 --> 0:06:18.040 So, just to contextualize this place a little bit more 0:06:18.080 --> 0:06:19.920 for people in the audience who may not be familiar. 0:06:19.960 --> 0:06:22.960 I mean, we in Australia have the coal industry, we 0:06:23.080 --> 0:06:26.200 have the gas industry, we have centers of you know, 0:06:26.360 --> 0:06:29.880 mining and extraction such as the Pilber other places. But 0:06:30.360 --> 0:06:32.479 am I right that the specific industry on this place 0:06:32.560 --> 0:06:35.520 was the tarsans? So can you just explain what they are? 0:06:36.360 --> 0:06:41.760 The tarzans are total anomaly. There are tarzans in Venezuela 0:06:41.800 --> 0:06:48.360 also that produce petroleum. But tarsand is bitjumin soaked sand 0:06:48.560 --> 0:06:50.640 and bitchumen. If you don't know, it's what you seal 0:06:50.680 --> 0:06:54.000 your driveway with. It's what you seal a house foundation with. 0:06:54.160 --> 0:06:58.240 It's a tari liquid substance. You can't really burn it, 0:06:58.320 --> 0:07:01.800 you know, unless you heat it way a normal combustive temperatures. 0:07:01.839 --> 0:07:04.960 It's not oil or gas in the sense that most 0:07:04.960 --> 0:07:07.880 of us understand it. And it has to be mined 0:07:07.920 --> 0:07:12.960 out of the ground. And this industry has altered, basically 0:07:13.400 --> 0:07:17.360 destroyed a thousand square miles of the northern boreal forest. 0:07:18.160 --> 0:07:23.040 And as they use gigantic shovels, much like coal mining 0:07:23.400 --> 0:07:27.160 to dig this stuff out, and then in order to 0:07:27.240 --> 0:07:30.160 process it, you have to melt it with billions of 0:07:30.200 --> 0:07:33.480 cubic feet of natural gas just to render it into 0:07:33.520 --> 0:07:36.640 a liquid form that can then be piped a thousand 0:07:36.680 --> 0:07:41.000 miles south to an American refinery for processing, where it 0:07:41.040 --> 0:07:44.720 needs more natural gas to refine it. So it is 0:07:44.840 --> 0:07:52.000 probably the least efficient, most environmentally destructive, most costly petroleum 0:07:52.000 --> 0:07:56.560 product anywhere on Earth, and the math that makes it 0:07:56.640 --> 0:07:59.160 work is fuzzy to say the least. 0:08:00.040 --> 0:08:02.720 How much I mean, what kind of gravity does this 0:08:02.840 --> 0:08:06.040 place have? Because of the toss hands within Canadian politics 0:08:06.040 --> 0:08:06.640 and society. 0:08:07.160 --> 0:08:12.440 So Alberta is the Texas of Canada. It's a very 0:08:12.480 --> 0:08:16.000 conservative state. It's pretty much owned by the petroleum industry. 0:08:17.880 --> 0:08:22.760 The petroleum industry really across most of North America controls 0:08:22.800 --> 0:08:26.360 a lot of the political discourse to an unwholesome degree. 0:08:26.800 --> 0:08:29.520 The amount of lobbying hours and energy that goes on 0:08:29.560 --> 0:08:32.640 in Ottawa, the capital of Canada, or in DC is 0:08:33.640 --> 0:08:36.880 shocking to say the least, and so Alberta is kind 0:08:36.880 --> 0:08:41.960 of a beneficiary of that. I would say it's the 0:08:42.000 --> 0:08:46.600 way information is controlled there. It's sort of small f 0:08:46.760 --> 0:08:50.880 fascist and you know, I'm really sorry to say that. 0:08:50.960 --> 0:08:54.800 You know, I'm a Canadian, generally proud Canadian, but you know, 0:08:54.840 --> 0:08:59.040 Alberta is a problematic place in complete denial about climate change, 0:08:59.480 --> 0:09:06.720 like Texas, like Washington, d C. Now, and it's basically 0:09:07.200 --> 0:09:12.040 in servitude to this so far very lucrative but extraordinarily 0:09:12.080 --> 0:09:17.600 destructive petroleum industry. And it creates a very weird tension 0:09:17.640 --> 0:09:22.080 where incredible wages can be garnered, but also the same 0:09:22.480 --> 0:09:25.120 mostly men. It's about twenty five to one up there. 0:09:25.240 --> 0:09:29.440 Men to women also live in enormous procarty because they 0:09:29.480 --> 0:09:32.200 can be laid off at any time. They get on 0:09:32.240 --> 0:09:35.600 the hook for one hundred thousand dollars f one fifty 0:09:35.760 --> 0:09:38.439 or a house and then they can lose it all. 0:09:39.280 --> 0:09:46.920 And it's a very kind of hyper and unstable situation 0:09:47.360 --> 0:09:49.680 that has a lot of casualties come out of it. 0:09:50.120 --> 0:09:52.240 And so when I want to get you to explain 0:09:52.280 --> 0:09:54.679 what happened in a second, but just before we move 0:09:54.720 --> 0:09:58.439 into that, what you've described means that when we talk 0:09:58.440 --> 0:10:01.160 about this catastrophic fire and this place, there was a 0:10:01.240 --> 0:10:03.240 kind of poetry in what happened. 0:10:03.960 --> 0:10:10.320 Right, Well, it's strange circularity. So the bitchumin industry of Canada, 0:10:10.640 --> 0:10:14.640 of Fort McMurray, it's to put this in perspective, Canada 0:10:14.760 --> 0:10:18.400 is the largest foreign supplier of petroleum to the United States. 0:10:18.440 --> 0:10:22.960 It's the biggest source of foreign exports. About four million 0:10:23.040 --> 0:10:27.120 barrels a day of diluted bitchumen runs out of Fort 0:10:27.200 --> 0:10:31.199 McMurray down into American refineries. It's a colossal amount of 0:10:31.720 --> 0:10:35.880 potential energy. And so Fort McMurray is the biggest emitter 0:10:36.120 --> 0:10:39.160 in the country of CO two. And the idea of 0:10:39.559 --> 0:10:43.160 a climate enhanced wildfire that was behaving in ways no 0:10:43.200 --> 0:10:46.760 one had ever seen before, the idea that this fire 0:10:46.840 --> 0:10:51.560 would not only threaten but actually overrun the entire city 0:10:52.559 --> 0:10:57.640 was kind of on the nose, really, and yet it happened. 0:10:57.760 --> 0:11:02.000 And I think what was surprising is how hard it was, 0:11:02.360 --> 0:11:04.960 even when the fire was in front of people's faces, 0:11:05.200 --> 0:11:07.560 how hard it was for them to believe that this 0:11:07.720 --> 0:11:10.240 was actually happening and happening to them. 0:11:10.720 --> 0:11:12.640 And you do a very good job in the book 0:11:12.679 --> 0:11:17.520 of describing how and when this began, that the fire 0:11:17.600 --> 0:11:20.600 kind of began over the hill as a distant problem 0:11:20.679 --> 0:11:22.679 not to think about. Can you talk about how this 0:11:22.760 --> 0:11:25.000 began and what happened to this place. 0:11:25.320 --> 0:11:29.079 So the boreal forest of Northern Canada, it runs actually 0:11:29.120 --> 0:11:32.000 all the way around the world, so the Russian Taiga 0:11:32.120 --> 0:11:36.360 is basically boreal forest. It continues across into North America, 0:11:36.360 --> 0:11:39.760 across Alaska, all the way across Northern Canada. It's the 0:11:39.760 --> 0:11:45.800 wettest biome on Earth, wetter than the tropical jungle, huge rivers, 0:11:47.080 --> 0:11:53.680 small oceans, inland, seas of lakes, and it's terribly flammable. 0:11:54.320 --> 0:11:57.640 So there are species there, just like here, that will 0:11:57.679 --> 0:12:01.560 not regenerate unless they're burned. So it's normal for the 0:12:01.600 --> 0:12:06.080 boreal forest to burn. And this city is an isolated city, 0:12:06.200 --> 0:12:10.439 five hours driving from the nearest other major source of assistance, 0:12:10.480 --> 0:12:16.760 which is Edmonton, terribly isolated, and so fires surround it 0:12:16.880 --> 0:12:20.000 every summer and every spring, and so there is this 0:12:20.880 --> 0:12:25.480 strange comfort with smoke plumes on the horizon, but also 0:12:25.600 --> 0:12:30.280 this magical compact that they seem to have that well 0:12:30.280 --> 0:12:32.280 the fire, Yeah, the fires burn out there, but they'll 0:12:32.320 --> 0:12:35.800 never come into our city. And that had worked for 0:12:35.880 --> 0:12:41.040 fifty years. And nature, you know, is not here to 0:12:41.840 --> 0:12:45.520 make agreements with human beings or their ambitions. Nature is 0:12:45.559 --> 0:12:49.000 here responding to the forces that influence it. And what 0:12:49.040 --> 0:12:54.000 we had on May third, twenty sixteen was a temperature 0:12:54.040 --> 0:12:57.920 record for that day broken by six degrees celsius, and 0:12:58.000 --> 0:13:01.560 we had relative humidity of eleven and that, you know, 0:13:01.760 --> 0:13:04.480 might make your eyes roll back. And it's not an 0:13:04.480 --> 0:13:08.120 interesting subject to me until I started looking at where 0:13:08.240 --> 0:13:13.079 eleven percent humidity is normal, and eleven percent humidity is 0:13:13.160 --> 0:13:16.360 normal in North America in Death Valley in the month 0:13:16.360 --> 0:13:22.320 of July, the driest hottest place on the continent. And 0:13:22.360 --> 0:13:25.720 now those conditions have been transposed to one of the 0:13:25.760 --> 0:13:29.840 most flammable ecosystems on Earth, and we've had two years 0:13:29.840 --> 0:13:34.400 of drought, and so those trees didn't just catch on fire, 0:13:34.440 --> 0:13:39.040 they exploded into flame. And at about one in the afternoon, 0:13:39.679 --> 0:13:43.760 a ten kilometer wide wave of fire one hundred meters 0:13:43.840 --> 0:13:50.600 tall swept into the city and it came fast and 0:13:51.600 --> 0:13:54.840 burnt through the city day and night for a week. 0:13:55.520 --> 0:13:58.320 And it's I think the only other fire that's lasted 0:13:58.360 --> 0:14:01.400 that urban fire that's lasted that long as the Great 0:14:01.480 --> 0:14:04.880 Fire of London in sixteen sixty six. And those were 0:14:04.960 --> 0:14:09.360 some different conditions, and so how did the people respond? 0:14:09.440 --> 0:14:16.840 First off, Well, one person I interviewed. There's this very 0:14:16.880 --> 0:14:21.400 heavy duty, angry looking black plume on the other side 0:14:21.440 --> 0:14:24.360 of the river from where she lives, and there had 0:14:24.400 --> 0:14:27.200 been four other big fires around the city. People were 0:14:27.240 --> 0:14:31.520 already being evacuated temporarily. This woman, who lived right in 0:14:31.560 --> 0:14:34.440 the middle of town was hosting one of these evacuated couples, 0:14:34.720 --> 0:14:38.000 and they were taking pictures of the plume across the river, 0:14:38.320 --> 0:14:42.040 but it was a novelty to them. It was like 0:14:42.080 --> 0:14:47.120 a rainbow. And then she went off to work in 0:14:47.160 --> 0:14:53.360 her Porsche and it was a bluebird day, unseasonably hot, 0:14:53.520 --> 0:14:56.040 and so she dressed for the weather. She wore a skirt, 0:14:56.080 --> 0:14:58.680 which she hardly ever did, because it's a city of men, 0:14:59.200 --> 0:15:01.600 and being a woman working there is a very weird, 0:15:01.760 --> 0:15:05.880 overdetermined experience, and it's a little bit like maybe being 0:15:06.160 --> 0:15:08.880 a female prison guard in a prison, like there's this 0:15:09.600 --> 0:15:13.280 unwholesome energy is directed at you. And in spite of this, 0:15:13.400 --> 0:15:15.440 she dressed it in a festive way and went off 0:15:15.480 --> 0:15:18.960 in her Porsche. And when she came back down into 0:15:19.000 --> 0:15:24.120 town for lunch, the city had disappeared behind this black 0:15:24.160 --> 0:15:28.240 and red curtain, and she didn't even understand what she 0:15:28.360 --> 0:15:31.680 was looking at It had happened so fast, it was 0:15:31.760 --> 0:15:36.680 so huge that what a lot of people experienced was disorientation. 0:15:37.160 --> 0:15:40.040 They simply didn't have the space in their head to 0:15:40.200 --> 0:15:43.920 understand what was happening. So and that was really interesting 0:15:43.960 --> 0:15:46.119 because you know, I have my feelings about the petroleum 0:15:46.120 --> 0:15:49.160 industry and people who work in it, and there's a 0:15:49.200 --> 0:15:52.680 policy of climate denial in Alberta. And this wasn't denial. 0:15:53.520 --> 0:15:58.680 This wasn't people being obtuse. This was something so enormous 0:16:00.320 --> 0:16:05.360 side their experience that they simply didn't have the cognitive 0:16:05.440 --> 0:16:10.120 capacity to process it in a rational way. It was 0:16:10.160 --> 0:16:13.920 just not computing. It just yeah, it basically kind of 0:16:13.960 --> 0:16:16.680 created more of a short circuit. And so and then 0:16:16.720 --> 0:16:21.040 you know, ash was falling. Sky was completely orange. By 0:16:21.200 --> 0:16:23.440 two or three in the afternoon. You could only function 0:16:23.480 --> 0:16:25.680 in the city with headlights because it had turned black. 0:16:26.160 --> 0:16:28.880 It was so dark from the except for things that 0:16:28.920 --> 0:16:34.680 were burning. And everybody realized, you know, not from the authorities, 0:16:34.720 --> 0:16:37.520 but from their neighbors saying, you know, my house is 0:16:37.560 --> 0:16:42.880 on fire, you should probably leave. Then this very hirky jerky, 0:16:43.000 --> 0:16:47.840 disorganized evacuation began, and with a miraculous outcome which we 0:16:47.840 --> 0:16:48.760 can get into But. 0:16:48.720 --> 0:16:50.640 I want to talk about the evacuation a second, but 0:16:51.000 --> 0:16:52.680 we'll take a step back, because one of the things 0:16:52.680 --> 0:16:55.160 you do so well through the book is you draw 0:16:55.280 --> 0:16:58.520 out these moments of absurdity, almost this kind of sense 0:16:58.560 --> 0:17:00.920 where the reality people have faced does not compute with 0:17:00.960 --> 0:17:03.240 the expectation of the wall as it should be. And 0:17:03.240 --> 0:17:04.760 I think one of the scenes that and I want 0:17:04.760 --> 0:17:06.639 to ask you about the authorities reaction a second, but 0:17:06.680 --> 0:17:08.880 one of the scenes in particular I'm thinking about involves 0:17:08.920 --> 0:17:11.439 the authorities, and that was when I think it was. 0:17:11.440 --> 0:17:13.679 Was it the fire chief when the radio station. 0:17:14.320 --> 0:17:20.919 Yeah, yeah, the he's he's in the radio station and 0:17:20.960 --> 0:17:24.680 he's being this is this at eleven am on May third, 0:17:25.440 --> 0:17:28.760 massive fire outside of town, and the fire chief and 0:17:29.359 --> 0:17:35.399 the head of the wildfire service are on the air. 0:17:36.359 --> 0:17:38.760 Who's listening. Everyone's gone to work, you know, everyone's in 0:17:38.760 --> 0:17:42.320 school or so to whoever's listening, they're saying, go to school, 0:17:42.400 --> 0:17:44.720 go to work. We've got we think we've got a 0:17:44.720 --> 0:17:48.679 grip on this. All is good. And then right after that, 0:17:48.760 --> 0:17:52.920 around noon, a journalist brought the wildfire guy into the 0:17:53.040 --> 0:17:56.359 radio station and it had a plate glass window that 0:17:56.440 --> 0:17:58.879 happened to look in the direction where the fire was, 0:17:59.600 --> 0:18:02.000 and you know, it was a distant you could barely 0:18:02.040 --> 0:18:04.119 see it, you know, at ten in the morning. But 0:18:04.200 --> 0:18:09.320 by twelve thirty it had achieved crossover, which is basically 0:18:09.320 --> 0:18:14.000 where the humidity and the temperature divide in a particular 0:18:14.000 --> 0:18:16.639 way that really energizes fire. You have that here in 0:18:16.680 --> 0:18:20.200 Australia too, for sure, And so that was happening and 0:18:21.000 --> 0:18:24.040 it changed the quality of the smoke coming up behind 0:18:24.040 --> 0:18:28.960 these neighborhoods. And so we see the interviewer who described 0:18:28.960 --> 0:18:31.679 this to me in detail. You hear this guy, the 0:18:31.720 --> 0:18:37.200 wildfire manager, just repeating by wrote these almost kind of platitude, 0:18:37.359 --> 0:18:42.560 like anodyne directives about what people should do, which was 0:18:43.600 --> 0:18:45.720 don't do anything, rash, go to work, do your thing. 0:18:46.160 --> 0:18:48.879 And we've got this in hand. But he's watching with 0:18:48.960 --> 0:18:53.600 his eyes as the smoke changes, and he knows, he understands, 0:18:53.640 --> 0:18:57.879 because he's a wildfire prison he understands what's happening. And 0:18:58.560 --> 0:19:01.400 then he kind of cuts the inner and hustles out 0:19:01.400 --> 0:19:09.000 of there. And that's when the first evacuation notices is issued. 0:19:09.119 --> 0:19:12.680 And so we see people, even the experts, even the 0:19:12.720 --> 0:19:17.200 people in charge, who understand the gravity of the fire conditions, 0:19:17.200 --> 0:19:20.080 how dry it is, how hot it is, two years 0:19:20.119 --> 0:19:22.520 of drought, all of that things that people in Australia 0:19:22.640 --> 0:19:26.200 and are very familiar with. And imagine the fire authority 0:19:26.680 --> 0:19:32.680 who understood that intellectually but still couldn't make the leap. 0:19:33.080 --> 0:19:35.840 My god, this is energy that could take over the city. 0:19:36.040 --> 0:19:39.320 And that's what you see kind of in real time 0:19:40.320 --> 0:19:44.080 as they start to put it together. And it's very 0:19:44.119 --> 0:19:46.560 hard to look at in retrospect. How could you not 0:19:46.840 --> 0:19:51.080 understand this when all the fire codes, the drought, moisture code, 0:19:51.200 --> 0:19:55.560 the temperature, the wind, everything was pointing to firestorm conditions. 0:19:55.560 --> 0:19:58.320 How could you not get it? And I think intellectually 0:19:58.760 --> 0:20:01.919 they got it, but they didn' get it existentially. And 0:20:01.960 --> 0:20:04.560 so that's what we see in this kind of tortured 0:20:04.600 --> 0:20:07.640 way as this city, you know, one of the wealthiest 0:20:07.680 --> 0:20:11.080 in North America, where people have enormous agency and enormous 0:20:11.119 --> 0:20:16.000 confidence in their ability to meet challenges, are overwhelmed by 0:20:16.400 --> 0:20:20.159 an energy they've never encountered and have no equipment to 0:20:20.320 --> 0:20:20.879 respond to. 0:20:21.440 --> 0:20:23.400 And I want to ask you about the evacuation because 0:20:23.400 --> 0:20:26.720 there's a concept in sociology called elite panic, and it's 0:20:26.720 --> 0:20:30.399 where decision makers. You know, in decision making roles across 0:20:30.400 --> 0:20:33.919 the board, assume that when bad news gets broken, the 0:20:33.960 --> 0:20:36.960 average person will freak out and behave very badly and 0:20:37.560 --> 0:20:40.240 you know, and break the rules and chaos will rain. 0:20:40.720 --> 0:20:45.200 But and you have your description of the evacuation of 0:20:45.240 --> 0:20:49.320 these places is vivid and haunting and in some ways 0:20:49.359 --> 0:20:52.919 beautiful despite the awful circumstances you are describing. Could you 0:20:52.960 --> 0:20:55.840 talk about what happened as people evacuated from these neighborhoods, 0:20:56.000 --> 0:20:57.480 as they evacuated from the city. 0:20:58.040 --> 0:21:02.000 So it's a Patrolilliam town. So everybody is there to 0:21:02.080 --> 0:21:04.400 do one thing. They might have different jobs, but it's 0:21:04.440 --> 0:21:06.960 all to serve the industry. It's a one industry town. 0:21:07.440 --> 0:21:11.000 It's a young town and a lot of them are 0:21:11.000 --> 0:21:13.640 living in very new developments. Some of these houses are 0:21:13.640 --> 0:21:17.640 only a year old because it's a supercharged, superheated economy. 0:21:17.680 --> 0:21:20.320 These houses are you know, start at half a million 0:21:20.359 --> 0:21:23.720 and go up from there again with these new developments. 0:21:23.720 --> 0:21:25.840 You probably have this in Australia too. There's only one 0:21:25.920 --> 0:21:28.960 road in people haven't really thought about, well, we should 0:21:28.960 --> 0:21:31.240 probably have an alternate exit road in case that one 0:21:31.280 --> 0:21:34.119 is blocked by fire. This is a really serious issue 0:21:34.119 --> 0:21:37.320 across a lot of the Western world and places in general, 0:21:37.560 --> 0:21:41.159 especially where there's new rapid development going in and so, 0:21:42.200 --> 0:21:45.919 and they are realizing that their community is on fire 0:21:46.000 --> 0:21:48.840 in a very uneven way. And again a lot of 0:21:48.880 --> 0:21:56.680 it is word of mouth. And what's extraordinary is somehow 0:21:57.200 --> 0:22:02.040 everybody did the right thing, and that statistically impossible. This 0:22:02.080 --> 0:22:04.919 is a city of eighty or ninety thousand people where 0:22:05.040 --> 0:22:08.399 you know, there are drug problems there, there are people 0:22:08.480 --> 0:22:11.840 who have worked, you know, pulled two or three twelve 0:22:11.840 --> 0:22:15.199 hour shifts. People are sleeping at odd hours. This industry 0:22:15.280 --> 0:22:17.800 runs around the clock, so you have people sleeping in 0:22:17.800 --> 0:22:22.199 the daytime, and you also have many different languages and 0:22:22.240 --> 0:22:25.719 ethnicities there, and it's kind of a melting pot. And 0:22:25.760 --> 0:22:28.840 so what to cut to make a long story short, 0:22:28.880 --> 0:22:33.719 there was a one hundred percent success rate with the evacuation. 0:22:33.920 --> 0:22:36.600 No one knew this for days. They kept as they 0:22:36.680 --> 0:22:39.960 you know, eventually started sifting through these burnt basements, of 0:22:40.000 --> 0:22:43.200 which there were thousands. They were expecting to find bones 0:22:43.320 --> 0:22:45.800 or something. They never found any. And they've they've you know, 0:22:45.840 --> 0:22:50.000 they've realized we had a one hundred percent successful evacuation. 0:22:50.280 --> 0:22:53.320 And of course, you know, that's because it was Canadians 0:22:54.240 --> 0:22:55.000 who and. 0:22:57.040 --> 0:22:57.200 So. 0:22:58.160 --> 0:23:00.920 But here's the thing, and so I could feel really 0:23:00.920 --> 0:23:05.240 really good about that until I found out what a 0:23:05.280 --> 0:23:08.040 Canadian was, which made me feel even better about it. 0:23:08.080 --> 0:23:11.000 Because in twenty sixteen, the year of the fire, there 0:23:11.040 --> 0:23:14.639 was that census that revealed the median household income of 0:23:14.680 --> 0:23:17.520 two hundred thousand dollars a year. Also, the other thing 0:23:17.520 --> 0:23:21.000 that that census revealed was that there were eighty eight 0:23:21.280 --> 0:23:25.720 zero first languages spoken in Fort McMurray in twenty sixteen. 0:23:26.800 --> 0:23:31.120 So it's like Toronto or Sydney in terms of its 0:23:31.200 --> 0:23:36.240 international nature. And so you have the languages, the ethnicities, 0:23:36.240 --> 0:23:40.080 the religions, the different concepts of what risk is, the 0:23:40.119 --> 0:23:45.720 different concepts of what community is. And yet somehow, between police, 0:23:46.200 --> 0:23:52.440 firefighters and citizens going door to door, every single person 0:23:52.920 --> 0:23:58.359 got out. And it's amazing. And this does not have 0:23:58.520 --> 0:24:00.879 This is not happening in Turkey right now, where we 0:24:01.000 --> 0:24:03.640 have a lot of fatalities. Didn't happen in la where 0:24:03.640 --> 0:24:07.200 thirty people were killed, didn't happen in Paradise where nearly 0:24:07.240 --> 0:24:10.000 one hundred were killed. Didn't happen in Valparaiso last spring 0:24:10.080 --> 0:24:15.280 where two hundred people were killed. People generally die in conflagrations, 0:24:15.640 --> 0:24:17.760 and there's been a lot of them over the past decade, 0:24:17.760 --> 0:24:23.080 and so Fort McMurray had this strange mercy visited upon it. 0:24:23.160 --> 0:24:26.280 And a lot of people work in the petroleum industry, 0:24:26.400 --> 0:24:31.240 so there have fire consciousness. But that doesn't explain a 0:24:31.320 --> 0:24:34.359 one hundred percent success rate. And I'm kind of hoping 0:24:34.359 --> 0:24:39.760 a sociologist will go up there and analyze the escape, 0:24:40.000 --> 0:24:43.560 because it's never been repeated and probably never will be. 0:24:44.000 --> 0:24:48.560 And so Canada got a pass. And their response to that, though, 0:24:48.800 --> 0:24:51.760 was to rebuild the city exactly as it was and 0:24:51.800 --> 0:24:56.680 to increased petroleum production and to be in complete denial 0:24:56.960 --> 0:24:59.280 about what happened on the evacuation. 0:25:00.000 --> 0:25:03.280 There are some incredible scenes, for instance, the people waiting 0:25:03.320 --> 0:25:05.359 in line in the car as the fire burned on 0:25:05.440 --> 0:25:07.439 both sides of the highway, and what you described was 0:25:07.440 --> 0:25:10.560 this incredible sense of solidarity and mutual aid. When the 0:25:10.640 --> 0:25:13.520 chips were down, people stepped up. For instance, the journalists 0:25:13.520 --> 0:25:16.400 you spoke of. I think he stayed until the very 0:25:16.440 --> 0:25:19.080