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British Columbia Burning

British Columbia Burning, By Bethany Lindsay. Photo supplied.
British Columbia Burning, By Bethany Lindsay. Photo supplied.

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British Columbia Burning
By Bethany Lindsay
MacIntyre Purcell Publishing

Last summer’s devastating fire season was definitely one for the history books — it destroyed the most territory, saw the single largest fire in B.C.’s history and held the province in a state of emergency for more than two months.

In British Columbia Burning, author Bethany Lindsay does an in-depth investigation into what happened last summer, also taking a look back at the history of wildfires in B.C. and a peak forward at the possibilities for both preventing and fighting them.

Woven throughout her book are stories, both personal and professional, about what it was like to live through the worst summer ever in B.C. Those stories are snappy, spare and smart — a style that comes with Lindsay’s background as a news reporter.

Lindsay drives home the point that climate change and a lack of preparedness by the province made the firestorm possible, while also ferreting out a few happy tales – those of pets who miraculously survived and cabins that somehow remained untouched.

Lindsay drives home the point that climate change and a lack of preparedness by the province made the firestorm possible, while also ferreting out a few happy tales – those of pets who miraculously survived and cabins that somehow remained untouched.

There are more than 100 full-colour stunning photographs, collected by photo editor Kelly Sinoski. (Full disclosure: Both Lindsay and Sinoski are friends of mine and we all worked together in the past at the Vancouver Sun.)

Gary Filmon, who reviewed the 2003 Kelowna fires for the province, writes the book’s foreword, saying wildfires are “Mother Nature’s final solution to the neglect and/or mismanagement of our forest resources.”

In 2003, Filmon recommended clearing much of B.C.’s forests of potential wildfire fuels, but as Lindsay writes, more than a decade after his report came out, just 10 per cent of that work was done, possibly enabling the tragic events of 2017.

But Lindsay also recognizes that preventing fires is a nearly impossible task.

“If there’s a way to make an environment 100 per cent fireproof – beyond drowning it in ocean water or burying it beneath a glacier – we have yet to find it,” she writes.

July 7 was a flashpoint in last summer’s fire season – lightning struck more than 49,000 times in B.C. that day, sparking more than 100 new fires. Lindsay cites research in the United States that found that for every degree of warming, there’s about a 12 per cent increase in lightning strikes. Environment Canada, curiously, says it has no information on any such correlation.

This book is both entertaining and informative – it’s a quick read, chock full of research, statistics and human stories. Readers hear from not only the experts, but also the firefighters who were on the ground and the people who were forced to flee from their homes.

Lindsay leaves us with plenty to think about, most particularly about how to prepare for the future.

“Recent research suggests that if average temperatures rise by just four degrees before 2080, the average size of wildfires in the southern British Columbia Interior could more than double, wildfire season could become 30 per cent longer, and summer fire intensity could soar by 95 per cent,” she writes.

Yikes.

We better do all we can to prevent such a future. Reading this book is a good first step.

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