All those wildfires out of control again this year. Makes you wonder how much of those beautiful forests will be affected in years to come. I’ve often driven by burnt-out sections on the way to Radium and marvelled at the ruin caused by these out-of-control fires.
I remember one trip 10 years ago or more travelling with my daughter from Radium to Calgary as a fire took out large sections by the roadside. We had to stop the car a few times, waiting for escorts. A massive smoky pall hung over everything and the air smelled like pure ash. It was scary. One had a sense of Dante’s Inferno or of being in a wasteland, not certain if one was ever going to leave.
Now with the climate changing, most obviously in summers, one has a sense that this cycle of fires will continue and burn down large tracts of western Canada and elsewhere in the country, too. No place seems safe and this is the new normal.
The bill for all this is huge and could help to beggar the economy. There is also the potential for towns and cities to be taken out. (I would not want to be living in the Okanagan valley.) As we’ve seen with smaller places, people’s homes and lives have been disrupted and destroyed (Fort Mac, Slave Lake) and it is either a long way or no way back to previous lives.