Front Burner - Why aren’t we more ready for wildfires?

Episode Date: August 7, 2026

Thousands of people have been evacuated from their homes throughout B.C. due to wildfires over the past week. The province warns that the fires could get worse in the coming days.The list of communities devastated by wildfires, and the intensity of the fires themselves, keeps growing. What was once a rare event has become disturbingly common. So why haven't we figured out a better way to fight wildfires? And what could we be doing differently?Mike Flannigan joins us to answer those questions. He's a professor of wildland fires at Thompson Rivers University and runs the Canada fire weather outlook. For transcripts of Front Burner, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/transcripts

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find it on the CBC Listen app or wherever you get your podcasts. This is a CBC podcast. Hi, I'm Jason Marcosoff, in for Jamie. The whole mountain was engulfed in no time and then houses, propane tanks were assuming, started exploding. The explosions were so loud and it was terrifying.

I was very optimistic that our house was going to make it and to find out that it didn't and get pictures that it did. It's a... definitely wasn't a reality that I thought was going to happen. There's so much smoke, I can't tell if my house has been missed or if it's gone. And it's the not knowing that it's so scary. Those are some of the thousands of people who've been evacuated from their homes throughout BC

due to wildfires over the past week. While some are getting the green light to return to their communities, new evacuations are being mandated, with the province warning that the fires could get worse in the coming days. and the list of communities devastated by wildfires in recent years keeps growing. This is Fort McMurray burning. Much of the main areas of Jasper are burned to the ground. Lytton has been devastated.

Residents of Collins fleeing for their lives by boat could only watch as their town burned to the ground. What was once a rare event has become disturbingly common, the Canadian summer is being transformed. But wildfires and the destruction they bring are nothing new. So why haven't we figured out a better, way to fight them. And what could we be doing differently? Mike Flanagan is here to talk us through that. He's a professor of wildland fires at Thompson Rivers University. He's been tracking and studying wildfires for decades. Hi, Mike. Thanks so much for taking the time to join us. Good day, Jason.

So Mike, you're in Kamloops, BC. As I'm talking to you on Thursday, your air quality index is 10 plus. That's as bad as it can get on the scale. What's it like there? That's just awful. I mean, I'm getting cabin fever. I'm a fire guy. and I'm sick and tired of this smoke, and I see no end. As a wildfire expert, I wonder what you've been thinking over these past few years, not just where wildfires are raging today. In 2023, 50 million hectares of land burn, more than double the previous record, then another really bad year in 2024, then another.

So, Mike, how bad is it compared to what we've seen in the past? In our modern day record, we've never had three bad fire years in a row. And to me, the start of this season, 2026, it was a litmus test to say, are we going to have another bad fire season? Because my narrative was there'd be bad years and there'd be quiet years, cool, wet years. Now I'm rethinking that. And 2026 is, yes, another active year. And so what I'm going to say now is expect a bad fire season every year. Now, regionally, yes, there'll be quiet years.

like Ontario could be really quiet next year. But nationally, we're a large country, and somewhere it's going to have an episode like we saw in Ontario, like we're seeing in BC. Northwest Territories is also burning, hasn't made much of the news. But this is our new reality. More fire and more smoke,

because we're living in a warmer world. So just to explain to us why it is so bad and why that warmer world makes it all worse. As we warm, we're seeing more fire. And people say, whoa, whoa, whoa, why is temperature so important? Here I'm not talking about individual fire like Lytton or Jasper or Fort McMurray or that long list, where wind and pyrochumenimbus could be playing a role, talking about fire or a large area, like a province, Ontario, Quebec, over a longer period of time, like decades.

So we're seeing longer fire seasons as we warm. Second, as we warm, we expect more lightning. And probably the most important reason is as we warm, the atmosphere's ability to suck moisture out of dead fuels in the forest floor increases rapidly so that unless we see more rain to compensate for this drying effect, we're going to have drier fuels. And what we've been seeing is actually drier conditions, and what the models predict for the future, are also drier conditions.

by the mine, drier fuels, means it's easier for a fire to start, whether it's that lightning strike or human cause. And I understand, too, that it's, you know, even the nighttime is becoming a great vector for fires, that firefighters used to get breaks from the growing of intensity of fires at night. Now, tell me how that's working. So I've been monitoring fires all my life, playing with fires all my life. And since, you know, my professional career, started in the 70s, two things stand out to me what's changed. And you've just mentioned the one of them, and that is fire is burning into and through the night. And this is increasing, and traditionally, it was a time for firefighters to catch their breath. You know, temperature goes down, relative humidity goes up, wind often drops, the fire goes quiet.

You catch your breath and prepare for the next day. but now nights are warming more rapidly than days, and because we're seeing more drought, fires are burning into and through the night. And I watched fires on satellite daily during the fire season, and this year I've seen a lot more fires burn through the night. Fire management has adapted somewhat. We now fight fires at night.

We also have night vision for helicopters, Alberta, British Columbia, some of the states do it as well. But this is bad news, okay? The other item that's really changed is something called pyrochumulimbus, fire-generated thunderstorms. And studies have shown that we are seeing more of these.

A cologunized Brian Stocks wrote a paper in 1987 about a pyrochuminalimbus, and it was because it was such a rare event. They did occur in the past, but, you know, for example, 2012, Canada had 142 fire-generated thunderstorms.

The previous global record for 2021 was 102. The Canadian record was 50. And now we're seeing them almost all the time. Wow. Because the fires are becoming more intense

because we're harder and drier. So if the situation Mike is becoming worse, it keeps getting worse and probably continue to grow worse, do you see our response rising to the level that meets its growing severity? So I think it's our new reality where we're going to see more fire and smoke.

Fire management is the responsibility of the landowner. So in Canada, that's 10 provinces, three territories, and Parks Canada's federal agency. They have some common features that allow them to share resources, but they all do things a little bit differently. My question is, is status quo the best option? I personally don't think so. There's been a recent Senate report, Canada on fire, an app title, and we should be exploring how other places around the world,

what's the best practices, and how we could make that work in Canada. The bottom line is we do not have enough resources in Canada to deal with the situation that we currently avail ourselves up. You know, as I speak, there's hundreds of firefighters from Mexico and they're calling in firefighters from New Zealand, Australia. And this is happening year after year after year. There's a number of options here. One is to have a federal emergency management agency.

We're the only G7 country without one. I want to return to this idea of a new agency a bit later, but let's dig into some of what you just said about firefighters. Some unions are claiming that their members are being asked to do war with less. Ontario, for example. The union says they're authorized to operate with 100,000, 90 crews, but staffing shortages are leaving them 34 crews short. So do we have enough people out there, Mike?

And if not, why not? So for the traditional wildland firefighters, we do not have enough in the busy years. Thus, we call on some years the United States. They're our closest neighbor. This year, United States is having a very active season as well, and they basically have no resources to spare. And they're bringing in resources from around the world. one option would be to use volunteer and paid firefires, structural firefires.

There's about over 100,000 of these firefires across Canada. Now, structural fires and wildland fires are quite different. The strategies are different, the equipment's different, but with training, these firefires, structural firefires, could be used on wildland fires. And for example, I live in Camelops, Camelps Fire and Rescue, they're trained. And they have experience dealing with wildland fires, and they're very good at it. This kind of model could be used across the country to able us to deal with the unwanted fires. You know, as mentioned, fires are natural, and when we're possible, we should let Mother Nature play a role.

Now, I'll use Ontario as an example here. They run a fire weather forecast for the next two weeks. they run a fire growth model for the next two weeks, saying where will that fire spread? And if it's close to community, two kilometers from Timmons, half second, you send crews to put it out. If it's 100 kilometers north of Timmons,

it may not be threatening anything, may be knocking down spruce budworm populations, and so they may say, we're just going to monitor it, let Mother Nature do her thing. The next day comes, they get a new fire weather forecast, new fire growth model,

and then update their decisions, and they may let it spread to a river and say, we're not going to let it jump the river. And to me, that kind of modified response is the way to go, to deal with a fires on a case-by-case basis. Now, you've done a lot of work yourself on fire weather forecasting. Can you explain what it is?

And are governments all over the place supplying that technology and then forecasting? So, you know, right now I have a fire weather outlook every week. You know, I say, what will the fire weather conditions be in five to ten days? to give us some lead time because we should be more proactive. And basically forecasting that hot, dry, windy is what we need to do. And we're pretty good at out of five to ten days. The challenge is forecasting ignitions, lightning and human causes. There are models for that, but not only do you have to forecast the lightning,

but you have to determine whether that lightning forecast will start a fire. And that depends on the fuel moisture, and it depends where the lightning strikes, and that's like rolling dice. But there are models that help us. And we're working on these, and we're using tools like machine learning, to be able to better predict where to expect the lightning. But having an early warning system, we do it for hurricanes. Why don't we do it for fire? I wanted to go back for a second to your talk about firefighter resources, and especially this idea of having urban firefighters help with wildland. because I'd imagine it's the same for provinces as you share resources that you don't want to send all your firefighters to, you know, the woods 100 kilometers north and then risk being shorthanded when there's a fire.

And I'd imagine that same thing goes, you know, especially this year from, you know, sending Ontario firefighters to the west. How do you navigate that? It's kind of like a game theory. So BC's on fire. Okay. And so BC says, hey, we need help. And so they call SIFC, that Canadian interagency forest fire center. And let's say Ontario wants to help.

You know, things are starting to quiet down. And, you know, Ontario wants to help. But they have to protect their home territory. So they hold stuff in reserve. And when you do send a crew, you won't see them for three weeks. Okay. So things may be quiet this week in Ontario. But what about next week?

And the week after? where you may be on fire again and say, my crew's in BC, I'd light them back, okay? So you always hold back. And that's only natural. You have to protect your home territory first before you share your resources and help your neighbor. In terms of resources, what about planes?

So the Senate report you were talking about earlier, one of the recommendations it made was to, quote, create and fund a national fleet of modern firefighting aircraft that are in good working order, end quote, and make sure that there are some personnel to support them. What's the quality of our fleet right now? So it's aging, for one. And the federal government actually in the last budget did allow funding for the leasing or contracting of aircraft.

And there was 10 aircraft. But these aren't new aircraft. These were existing aircraft. And so the federal government's paying for it instead of the province or someone else leasing or contracting these planes. We need more planes. Absolutely. I do want to point out that, you know, it's the firefighters, the men and women on the front that put that fire out. Aircrafts are great help, especially during initial attack.

When the fire first start, they buy you extra time because when things are extreme, you have about 30 minutes to put that fire out. All fires start small. That's our window to put it out. After about 30 minutes, the fuels are dry, conifer, hot dry windy, and we get, we call it, crown fires because the fire spreads from the forest floor to the tops or crown to the tree, the horse has left the barn. Aerial attack becomes ineffective. It's not safe for ground crews to fight the head of the fire.

So that first half hour is critical. Having aircraft could buy you a few extra minutes, but Canada is no one for its wire bombers. And you can see pictures of them in Europe, California, all around the world. And there's a plant near Calgary. and they have orders. I think if you wanted to buy a plane, put an order in, I think you'd have to wait to 233, 2034?

Yeah, our fleet is aging. We do need additional aircraft. I would argue we need additional firefighters, kind of a national firefighter group where you don't have to worry about keeping someone reserved for your home territory that can be proactively deployed to assist the community,

the province, the territory, and be used as required. And having those in place before your province or territories on fire, I think will help address this problem. It's been said that being neighbors with America is like sleeping with an elephant. One gets affected by every twitch and grunt. Well, these days, there's a lot more than twitches and grunts in dealing with the U.S. I'm Paul Hunter.

And I'm Katie Simpson. We're reporters here in Washington, and every Wednesday will bring you a smart conversation to help you make sense of how American politics are affecting Canada. Our new podcast is called Two Blocks from the White House. Find and follow now wherever you get your podcasts, including YouTube. So earlier this summer, Mike, two First Nations were largely destroyed in Northern Ontario, Collins and Whitewater Lake. The leadership of those first nations were very critical of how the evacuations were handled. say they didn't receive timely information from the government and that evacuation's orders came too late and many people had to self-evacuate. Leaders are doubling down on their calls for a public inquiry, arguing the province didn't properly prepare for this year's wildfire season. Ontario is missing in action when it comes to the response of what we faced in our community.

Indigenous communities must be partners in decisions that affect our territories, not observers, waiting for decisions to be made at least. swear. What are the biggest challenges around managing evacuations? Is there something we could do differently on that front? Yes. So if you look at the reviews of fires, whether it's Slave Lake, Fort McMurray, whichever review you want to look at, communication is up near the top, if not the top recommendation. We have to improve communication. And we cannot just rely on cell phones and social media. You know, we have to look at ways. to better communicate maybe some old-school ways, blank sirens that are still used in tornado alley in the States and for tsunamis.

But we have to do a better job of communicating emergency management options, information directions. I mean, there's a lot we can still do. In response to some of the criticism of what happened in evacuations, Collins and Whitewater Lake, Ontario Premier Doug Ford said, quote, Ontario has taken the lead on this. On reserve, the feds have the responsibility

to take care of First Nations, but we're taking care of them. So ultimately, who is responsible for making sure communities are safe? It depends. Here, maybe Jasper is an example. Jasper is a national park, but the community is actually Alberta.

And, you know, if you read the reports, there was some sort of, you know, who's in charge here, okay? And, you know, one thing I've learned over the years is you need a unified command. Everyone has to be on the same page. If you have two bosses, it's not going to work. So this is a necessary way to address. In Canada and other places, we can use ICS Incident Command System that, you know, follows this unified command approach. So it depends if the community is provincial or territorial or indigenous. There are different responsibilities depending on, you know, where that community is located.

And then you can go into a state of emergency. And it's done differently in different provinces. The community can call a state of emergency and then the province, you know, it's a mess, all right? And it's all about governance. And the problem is some of the... the aspects of fire. The governance is community-based. Some of it is provincial or territorial, and some is federal. Again, everyone on the same page is challenging at best. And this brings up something that I know that you've been banged the drum about. And the Senate report mentioned as well,

this idea of creating a federal coordinating office for wildfires and emergency response. But provinces, as you were saying, do share resources. So what would a new federal agency for wildfire and emergency management, allow the government to do that we're not already doing. First, it would increase the resources available for these episodes where we see extreme fire activity, and we've seen multiple examples this year, Quebec, Ontario, Northwest Territories, and now B.C.

And it will allow additional resources. Instead of getting hundreds of firefighters from Mexico, we could be using well-trained Canadian firefighters. And, you know, it could be all hazard. They could be used for floods, hurricanes, earthquakes, and be quick deploy or better yet be deployed before the event. But it would also have this early warning system to highlight where, you know, we expect the extreme fire weather, the new fire starts, and share that with the provinces and territories. and allow the fire management agencies to call upon these additional Fed resources that we don't have to hold back. Now, SIFSI could play a role and be part of this FEMA-type agency, but still, it has to be within the government of Canada,

whether it's emergency management or natural resources Canada, indigenous services Canada. You have to work together. We have to be on the same page. It will cost money, and one option is D&D. As their budget grows, if they go to 5%, that top 1.5% can be used for a FEMA-type agency. And they're one of the few departments that has an increasing budget. So there's a number of considerations, but we can do this, and we can have improved response to reduce the likelihood of the next JAS,

the next Fort McMurray, it's only going to happen again. So prevention is always better than paying after the fact. So generally we find for every dollar you spend in prevention, it saves you $4, 5, 10, some even say $15 down the road. So like I said, if we can prevent one Jasper, one Fort McMurray, it can more than pay for itself. Yes, you know, these early warning systems, sometimes the forecast will be wrong.

But if you write more often than not, it will pay for itself. And hardening our communities and critical infrastructure is the path forward. And if you've been watching social media this summer, you'll find a whole lot of people contrasting this environmental disaster we're experiencing with Prime Minister Mark Carney's record of pulling back on climate change targets. And in particular, his decision to Greenlight, a new pipeline. I mean, he'd say he's taking more concrete action. than the Trudeau government ever did.

We relied too much on targets, laws, that weren't driving the actual investment that's necessary to reduce emissions. So we shifted our focus, shifted our focus to get that investment driven. But from your perspective, are politicians treating this new reality with the urgency it deserves?

No, absolutely not. The last thing we need is a new pipeline, okay? It's another nail in our cough, then. We have to get off fossil fuels. The economics is driving us to the renewables. Solar is a lot cheaper than oil, gas, or coal, all right? And it's only going to get cheaper as the technology improves. And, of course, the geopolitical situation globally,

Strait of Hormuz, and the problem with getting oil distributed is driving countries to renewables. and we should be leading the pack rather than following the pack. As a matter of fact, we're not doing anything constructive at this point, I would say. We need to do it about phase on renewables. But I think the brutal reality, though,

is, of not mistaken, that any level of climate action we do right now is not going to change the next few years of fires. They're going to keep getting worse regardless of what we do, right? For the next few years, yes, but down the road, you know, we have to think of our children and our grandchildren, if you have them. I mean, the layer we delay dealing with this problem, the worse it's

going to get. Yes, even if I had a magic wand and said, no more fossil fuel burning globally, we're going to continue to warm for a decade or two, but then we start to come down, all right? If we delay it five or ten years, then we're going to continue to warm even longer, and who knows if we get our act together in five or ten years, you know, a colleague and I, Mike Weber wrote it paper in the 90s on fire and climate change. Near the end of the paper, we say, urgent action is needed now.

Here, you know, almost 30 years later, I'm saying the same bloody thing. I'm getting tired of saying this. We need urgent action now and talk is cheap. Canada's record is abysmal. I can't be more direct than that in terms of, dealing with the climate change emergency crisis, call up what you will. We're doing a horrible job. We have to do better. So to wrap up, there's a lot of anger among the public right now over

this new normal, how our summers are changing, the smoke forcing us to say inside. Summer camps, shutting down, industry, farming being affected. People have to worry about evacuations and losing their towns. The effects of these fires have become just inescapable, Mike. Do you think we're reaching a tipping point where we're finally going to make some big changes around wildfire management? I hope so. I'd like to say that to change human behavior, we need a few bloody noses. We're getting those bloody noses, and it's time to change. And, you know, in the fire business with the federal government for many years, many decades, and there wasn't much funding for it. Fort McMurray came along, and now there's been significant funding for fire. That's great. That's first step. I'm

hoping that what we're seeing with these three now for very active, impactful years, we will start to change in how we deal with fire management. And the Senate report that we've talked about, federal government has a hundred and a 180 days to respond to that. So let's hope we see something in the next budget. Mike, thank you so much for what wasn't a comfortable, but an important conversation. I'm pleasure. That's all for today. Front burner was produced this week by Joyita Shungupta, Matthew Amha, Kevin Sexton, Cecilia Armstrong, Sam McNulty, and Mackenzie Cameron.

Our YouTube producer is John Lee. Our music is by Joseph Chavison. Our senior producer is Imogen Burchard. Our executive producer this week is Elaine Chow. I'm Jason Marcosoff. Thanks so much for listening. Talk to you next week. For more CBC Podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.