News Brief | What happens when you can no longer fight a wildfire?

As out-of-control wildfires burned hundreds of homes in southern British Columbia this August, Cliff Chapman, director of operations for the province’s wildfire service, issued a sobering statement. “I cannot stress enough that the conditions we are facing right now are conditions that we have never seen before,” he told reporters.

In past years, the U.S. Forest Service’s red-flag warning was sufficient to convey extreme fire risk, but officials this year found it inadequate. In Washington State, they appended a designation typically reserved for life-threatening tornadoes: particularly dangerous situation.

But what’s really striking this year is how many civilians and firefighters across the hemisphere have described lethal combinations of velocity and ferocity.

There was a time in the recent past — in the 1980s and 1990s — when we could have been forgiven for not being sure how to respond to the future disruptions of climate breakdown. But now we know. In our own hearts and minds, there may yet be room and reason for compassion and forgiveness, but nature will show us no such sympathy.

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