Fire Weather: A True Story from a Hotter World

Much of modern furniture, clothing, and upholstery is plastic-based, meaning that most homes are almost entirely made of petroleum products. In addition to proving the ubiquity of petroleum in modern life, this makes modern human homes uniquely vulnerable to fire. In Fort McMurray, the huge, thousand-degree boreal fire turned homes into “petroleum vapor chambers” (146). Houses in Fort McMurray were essentially exploding, and firefighters throughout the town rescued and evacuated people as the same crisis played out in neighborhood after neighborhood. Soon, fire enveloped the entire town. Natural fire breaks like parks and rivers were useless to stop it. Additionally, as the grill fuel tanks in almost every backyard and the gas in abandoned vehicles exploded, fuel tanks launched metal shrapnel into the air, posing another deadly risk.

The fire grew so hot that one firefighter reported watching an entire house catch fire and fully disintegrate to the ground in only five minutes. Fueling this phenomenon, called “flashover,” were the numerous petroleum products in and around homes. Firefighters started to combat the fire by moving four houses ahead of a burning house and saving the fifth one by wetting it down. This worked somewhat to curb the fire, but it took an emotional toll on the firefighters since they had to let homes burn to stay ahead of the blaze.