Although firefighting methods have been revolutionized in recent decades, communities may still underestimate what could be coming
Aftermath of the great fire of 1904 which burned through the night of April 19 in downtown Toronto. About 100 buildings and 220 businesses were gutted, leaving a smoking, 7.9-hectare scar. In a city of 219,000 people, 6,000 jobs were lost. The damage was estimated at $11-million but miraculously, no one was killed. The fall was warm, the harvest bountiful, when the north of town began to burn. Locals assumed the clouds were part of a rainstorm.
History can teach us to better understand fire—and these are lessons we’re going to need. In the last century, the largest three per cent of fires accounted for 97 per cent of the total area burned, and the vast majority were ignited by lightning. Although the fires of today kill fewer people, it is a result of better firefighting rather than smaller fires. “We’re facing increasingly intense fires,” says Peter Murphy, a retired professor of forest fire management at the University of Alberta.
On a day dubbed “Black Tuesday” in 1911, 73 people died during a forest fire that burned from Michigan through southern Ontario. The province saw its deadliest flames four years later with the Matheson Fires, shortly before the Great Fire of 1919 scorched near Fort McMurray. Two decades later, a fire in 1936 in southern Alberta spread nearly 8,000 hectares . “It was analogous to the conditions in Fort McMurray now,” says Murphy. “It really marked the start of Alberta forest protection.
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