Posted on Aug 20, 2023
Yellowknife residents wonder if wildfires are the new normal as western Canada burns
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https://www.npr.org/2023/08/19/ [login to see] /yellowknife-wildfires-canada-northwest-territories-british-columbia
For the past few days, Ollie Williams has been intermittently checking the doorbell camera from his phone to see if his house is still there. Sometimes, he checks the camera that's normally used to watch the dog when he and his partner aren't home.
"It's a rather traumatizing way to check back in," he admits. "I looked at the camera of our nice living room there — you know, there's the TV, there's the sofa, there's the dog's bed. And I cried for about five minutes."
Williams isn't sure if he'll ever see it in person again.
For the past few days, Ollie Williams has been intermittently checking the doorbell camera from his phone to see if his house is still there. Sometimes, he checks the camera that's normally used to watch the dog when he and his partner aren't home.
"It's a rather traumatizing way to check back in," he admits. "I looked at the camera of our nice living room there — you know, there's the TV, there's the sofa, there's the dog's bed. And I cried for about five minutes."
Williams isn't sure if he'll ever see it in person again.
Yellowknife residents wonder if wildfires are the new normal as western Canada burns
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Posted 9 mo ago
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PO1 William "Chip" Nagel
..."A potential new normal
It's part of a natural cycle for Canada's boreal forests to burn, and at a certain level it's beneficial for the ecosystem.
"Some people are like, 'Well, this is climate change. This is terrible. We've never seen this before.' That's wrong. We've seen this plenty of times. But it is [also] climate change, and it is much worse than we've seen before," Daniel Perrakis, a fire research scientist with the Canadian Forest Service in British Columbia, told NPR.
Climate change makes large, destructive wildfires more likely because of hotter temperatures and drier vegetation. Higher average temperatures are increasing the length of the fire season, the amount of land burned, and the number of places where fires can occur. In recent years, fires have expanded in the Arctic and even in some rainforests.
For Ollie Williams, waiting to see if his house — and his community in Yellowknife — is OK, he says he's worried that fire seasons like this might just be the new normal: "I think, the scariest thing is that this year is an outlier, but it might not be an outlier in future. It might just be a regular summer. And then what do we do?"
But he also says it's hard to think about the future when there is so much to worry about from day to day.
And then he gets a message from someone fighting the fires back in Yellowknife, and he hangs up to update the community, now scattered, waiting to go back home."
..."A potential new normal
It's part of a natural cycle for Canada's boreal forests to burn, and at a certain level it's beneficial for the ecosystem.
"Some people are like, 'Well, this is climate change. This is terrible. We've never seen this before.' That's wrong. We've seen this plenty of times. But it is [also] climate change, and it is much worse than we've seen before," Daniel Perrakis, a fire research scientist with the Canadian Forest Service in British Columbia, told NPR.
Climate change makes large, destructive wildfires more likely because of hotter temperatures and drier vegetation. Higher average temperatures are increasing the length of the fire season, the amount of land burned, and the number of places where fires can occur. In recent years, fires have expanded in the Arctic and even in some rainforests.
For Ollie Williams, waiting to see if his house — and his community in Yellowknife — is OK, he says he's worried that fire seasons like this might just be the new normal: "I think, the scariest thing is that this year is an outlier, but it might not be an outlier in future. It might just be a regular summer. And then what do we do?"
But he also says it's hard to think about the future when there is so much to worry about from day to day.
And then he gets a message from someone fighting the fires back in Yellowknife, and he hangs up to update the community, now scattered, waiting to go back home."
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PO1 William "Chip" Nagel good day Brother William, always informational and of the most interesting. Thanks for sharing, have a blessed day!
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