Dark Days at Noon: The Future of Fire

304 Pages·2022·26.277 MB·English

by  Edward Struzik

DARK DAYS NOON
AT

Edward Str uzik
DARK DAYS
NOON
AT
T HE F U T U R E OF F IR E
McGill-Queen’s University Press
Montreal & Kingston • london • ChiCago
© McGill-Queen’s University Press 2022
isbn 978-0-2280-1209-2 (cloth)
isbn 978-0-2280-1348-8 (ePdF)
Legal deposit third quarter 2022
Bibliothèque nationale du Québec
Printed in Canada on acid-free paper
This book has been published with the help of a grant
from the Canada Wildland Fire Network.
We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts.
Nous remercions le Conseil des arts du Canada de son soutien.
LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION
Title: Darks days at noon : the future of fire / Edward Struzik.
Names: Struzik, Edward, 1954– author.
Description: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: Canadiana (print) 2022019484X | Canadiana (ebook)
20220194912 | isbn 9780228012092 (cloth) | isbn 9780228013488 (ePdF)
Subjects: lCsh: Wildfires—Canada—History. | lCsh: Wildfires—
Canada—Prevention and control—History. | lCsh: Wildfires—
United States—History. | lCsh: Wildfires—United States—
Prevention and control—History.
Classification: lCC sd421.34.C3 s77 2022 | ddC 363.37/9—dc23
CONTENTS
vii 15 143
Acknowledgments • Nuclear Winter •
16 148
Yellowstone: A Turning Point •
1 17 157
Introduction • Big and Small Grizzlies •
1 18 18 161
Prelude to the Dark Days at Noon • Climate and the Age of Megafire •
2 22 19 166
The Fire Triangle • The Holy Shit Fire •
3 32 20 177
More Dark Days Coming • The Pyrocene •
4 46 21 188
The Big Burn • Nuclear Winter: Part Two •
5 56 22 196
Big Burns in Canada • Owls and Clear-Cuts •
6 72 23 203
Paiute Forestry • Water on Fire •
7 80 24 214
Fire Suppression • The Arctic on Fire •
8 91 25 224
The Civilian Conservation Corps • The Big Smoke •
9 100 26 232
Canada’s Conservation Corps • Fire News •
10 251
The Fall of the Dominion Conclusion •
116
Forest Service •
11 120
The Royal Commission into Wildfire •
265
Illustrations •
12 125
White Man’s Fire •
271
Notes •
13 130
International Co-operation •
287
Index •
14 138
Blue Moon and Blue Sun •

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I have experienced a lot of fire in my time,
most notably on canoe trips through
the boreal forest of the sub-Arctic where there were no firefighters to extinguish
them. Fortunately, most were too far away to do me harm. But one that seemed
to be coming at me as I was hiking up the Lockhart River in the Northwest
Territories was frightening because of the noxious smoke and because I had no
idea which direction to run to escape it. The 2004 fires in the Yukon and Alaska
were also memorable for the fact that they were so big and all-encompassing
that they put an end to plans for me and my family to drive down the Alaska
Highway and canoe the Wind River that summer.
My first meaningful insights into the science and history of fire had just
arrived the year before when Parks Canada’s Michel Boivin, Mark Heathcott,
Rick Kubian, Rob Walker, Steve Otway, and Dave Smith gave me the chance
to see how intense, fast-moving fires like those that swept through the Rocky
Mountain parks that summer behaved and threatened nearby towns. The fires in
Kootenay were caused by lightning. The one in Jasper was a prescribed burn that
got out of control. It was still a time when government employees could share
their thoughts without having to go up the chain of command where responses
to questions would be vetted and answers rehearsed in advance so there would
be no controversy.
The year 2003 was what Kubian described as a “career fire season.” He and
his colleagues had never experienced anything like it before. A long hot summer
turned the valleys into furnaces, setting the stage for duff and fire-resistant
hardwoods to burn even at night, when fires normally go to sleep and smoulder.
Then the winds came in, forcing officials to engage in the potentially career-
ending strategies that I describe in this book. In both cases, they were damned
if they didn’t take the risk and damned if the strategies they proposed failed.
I didn’t fully appreciate what Rob Walker meant when he predicted that the
2003 fire season was a “harbinger” of what was to come in a rapidly warming
world. But later that year British Columbia and California burned big, forcing
the kind of mass evacuations that had been rare in the previous half-century.
The record-breaking 2004 wildfire season in the Yukon and Alaska was followed
by a series of truly remarkable fires such as the Anaktuvuk fire that incinerated
so much tundra on the North Slope of Alaska in 2007.
In 2008, Brian Stocks of the Canadian Forest Service invited me to come to
Cold Lake, Alberta, where he and 120 scientists from around the world were
participating in a $24 million nasda-led project tracking smoke and the erup-
tion of pyroCbs. Stocks has spent an inordinate time helping me understand the
science of fire, as has Mike Flannigan, a meteorologist and fire scientist who has
encouraged me to no end in this book-writing effort. Cliff White, the architect
of Parks Canada’s wildfire management plan, has also shared many insights and
physically walked me through a future fire scenario in Banff.
There are many other fire scientists to whom I am grateful: Scott Rupp,
deputy director at International Arctic Research Center, University of Alaska
Fairbanks; Andrew Larson from the University of Montana; Jill Johnstone from
the University of Saskatchewan; Jen Beverly from the University of Alberta;
Marty Alexander, Ellen Whitman, Mike Norton, Roger Brett, and Brian
Simpson from the Canadian Forest Service; and Uldis Silins, who explained
the research he has been doing in the aftermath of the 2003 Lost Creek fire in
Crowsnest Pass and the 2017 Kenow fire in Waterton Lakes National Park. I
also had a memorable day with Chad Hanson when we hiked through the Sierra
Nevadas in California where the Rim Fire burned big in 2013.
Were it not for Fred Wurster, a US Fish and Wildlife Service scientist work-
ing in the Great Dismal Swamp National Wildlife Refuge, I would never have
known that some firefighters wear hip waders and that fire is a regular visitor
to degraded wetlands. It was a pleasure keeping up with Mike Fromm when he
was affiliated with the United States Naval Research Laboratory unravelling the
mysteries of pyroCbs.
Another side of the fire story involved botanists and biologists such as Gordon
Stenhouse, Elly Knight, Scott Nielsen, John Spence, Federico Riva, and many
others who shared their insights into fire’s impact on plants and animals. My
viii Acknowledgments
five expeditions with Gordon capturing grizzly bears were easily the most
memorable of the field trips I did.
I would also like to thank ecohydrologist Mike Waddington for guiding me
through the fire that burned around the wetlands in Georgian Bay in 2018. And
to the folks at Parks Canada who shared photos of fires that burned in Canada’s
national parks, thank you as well.
Thanks to McGill-Queen’s University Press for giving me the opportunity to
write this book and to editor Khadija Coxon for guiding the manuscript through
the peer review process and clearing the way for Susan Glickman to edit the
book. The anonymous peer reviewers invested a lot of time, offering suggestions,
making corrections, and encouraging me with very kind words. I figured that
Kathleen Fraser, the managing editor at McGill-Queen’s, must have thought
that the book had merit when she brought Susan Glickman on board. Susan is
a very fine novelist, poet, and essayist. It was humbling but gratifying to work
with someone with so much talent.
To my wife Julia Parker, who considered my thoughts and read through the
manuscript, making invaluable suggestions in both cases, I am also grateful, as
I have been in the past when she helped me with other projects.
Finally, another shout-out to Mike Flannigan and the University of Alberta
for making it possible to have so many photos published in the book and to Kari
Greer, whose fantastic photographs for the US Forest Service grace the cover as
well as a number of inside pages.
Acknowledgments ix