This is Ollie. Earlier this summer, I listened to the audiobook of John Vaillant’s book Fire Weather. He spent the seven years after the Fort McMurray wildfire comprehensively studying the fire’s behaviour, how authorities responded, and the consequences.
I spoke with him this evening. He has concerns about Yellowknife and he sees “echoes.”
Others disagree. At a briefing this evening, NWT Fire said the conditions in Yellowknife are not the same – for one, the relative humidity is significantly different. The temperature here is much cooler than it was there.
Listen to the full interview in this emergency edition of Sounds From The Outhouse as Yellowknife triggers an evacuation alert for western areas. There are no bells and whistles, we dive straight into it.
You can read the transcript, too. (Later this evening – as fast as I can type – we’ll have a full interview with the mayor on our site, who takes a different view.)
Emergency Podcast: John Vaillant, Fire Weather author, on Yellowknife's fire risk