Eh Sayers Episode 33 - Orange Skies, Smoky Air and Billions at Risk of Going Up in Smoke

Transcript

Max: Welcome to Eh Sayers, a podcast by Statistics Canada where we meet the people behind the data and explore the stories behind the numbers. I'm your host, Max Zimmerman

I'll be honest, as a city dweller, wildfires just aren't on my day-to-day radar. But to date, 2023 was Canada's most destructive wildfire season yet. Over 6,000 wildfires burned at least 15 million hectares of land during 2023. For those of you like me, having a hard time visualizing what 15 million hectares of land looks like, that's an area of destruction larger than England.

We see these apocalyptic scenes online, but when we keep scrolling on our socials, life for us urbanites, it just keeps on going, and that's been the case as far back as I can remember. But in recent years, even our biggest cities have started to feel some of the real tangible impacts of these wildfires.

For several summers in a row now, smoky air and orange skies have descended upon Southeast Ontario, impacting visibility and causing air quality advisories due to some of the worst air quality in the world at the time. What used to be considered a western Canadian problem only, now has researchers convinced that wildfires are an issue that faces the entire country.

So far this year, wildfire season in Canada has started off thankfully pretty slow. But experts like those you're about to hear from, they're not breathing any sighs of relief just yet. Let's meet them now and find out what the data says about what we can expect for the rest of the summer and into the future

Mike: My name's Mike Flannigan, and I have many titles. Uh, I'm a research chair, I'm a professor, wildland fire. I'm a fire guy is, is what I like. I'm at, uh, based in Kamloops, British Columbia, and it's the traditional and unceded territory of the Secwépemc and Tk'emlúps people.

Mark: My name is Mark Brown, and I, I'm a principal researcher in the Economic Social Analysis and Modeling Division here at StatCan.

Max: So Mike, maybe I'll start with you. Can you set the scene for us? I know that 2023 was a record-breaking year in terms of wildfires. What have we been seeing since then?

Mike: So 2023 was record-smashing. Uh, about 4% of our forest burned, 15 million hectares. It sounds like a lot, but it's like, uh, seven times the size of Lake Ontario.

It-it's just a huge area and completely unexpected. And followed by 2024, which was also a very active year, though it didn't start active. It was kind of late, mid-season, late season. And then 2025 came along, and it started really fast, was giving 2023 a run for its money, finished in second place. Over the three years, we burned about 8% of our forest in Canada.

So to me, 2026 is a litmus test, 'cause I always used to say, "Ah, there'll be cold, wet years and hot, dry years," but maybe we're changing, and we're going to see active fire every year. Um, so 2026 is this litmus test, so, uh, gonna be interesting to see what develops this year.

Max: And how is it starting so far?

Mike: It's actually starting quite slow. It's more like a 2024 year, though there are indicators that suggest it may be an active year, things like, uh, abnormally dry conditions or drought in parts of Canada, though things improved a bit. Also, the summer season forecast, yes, you have to take with a lot of salt, um, suggests it's gonna be a hot summer, and the precipitation forecast suggests it's gonna be dry, especially in western Canada, and that's a recipe for wildfire.

But especially the precipitation forecast can be n-not completely reliable. And the disclaimer is no one knows the future. It will depend on the day-to-day weather we see and how many ignitions we see.

Max: And Mark, I think this is a good time to get you in here. Maybe you can speak to us a bit about the economic impacts that you and your team are seeing here at StatCan with the work that you're doing.

Because when I think of measuring the cost of a fire, I have this image in my head of a researcher or a scientist in, like, a white trench coat on the ground just counting all the buildings that have fallen and sort of adding up a total dollar value and then putting a cost on it. But something tells me that it's a bit more complicated than that.

Mark: Yeah, in, in terms of trying to sort of tease out the numbers from our statistics, um, there's basically-- it's, it's kind of a two-step process. The one is to say, is to try to figure out, well, what were the areas actually impacted? So that's where the fire went through or where there was e-evacuations. So we can use, you know, there's remote sensed information on where the fires burned areas were, w- that we use, and then we also use information on what the geographic areas of where, where the evacuations were from multiple different sources.

So we put those together, and you basically have a map of where the, where the fires happened and, and, and, and also where the evacuations were. And it's kind of like taking tracing paper and taking a, a grid, one kilometer one kilometer sort of sticking on top of where those fires are. And you're kind of like tracing in where the fires overlap with those grid squares.

And we've been able to measure, have an estimate what economic output, GDP happens in those squares.

Max: Interesting.

Mark: So you take the fire, you lay it on top of the squares, say, "Oh, well those are the ones where there's an overlap," and you add it up. And so I talk about Edson, Alberta, you add up how much of those grid squares in, in Edson producing GDP had a wildfire come through or, or were, or were evacuated.

And the same thing across the country through the fire season, and that's how we come up with, with, with those numbers.

Max: Okay, yeah, that's really interesting. So yeah, there's the cost of the actual damage to the physical buildings and stuff, and then there's also the exposure to the GDP element. Mike, how do fires start?

I know there's the natural lightning, of course, but then there's also human-caused fires as well. Could you talk a bit about those and maybe what percentage of our fires are human-caused versus natural?

Mike: So in Canada, just over half our fires are started by lightning, but they're responsible for over ninety percent of the area burned.

And there's a seasonal component. Most of the spring fires are human-caused, and, and most of the summer fires are lightning-caused. Um, human causes, these are primarily accidental. There, there are, are arson fires, unfortunately, but they're a really small percent. Most of them, you know, parking your, your vehicle with a hot muffler over dry grass starts a fire.

Campfires, people burn fields, that accidentally starts fires sometimes. Uh, power lines, railways, there's a number of ways that people and our infrastructure start fires across the landscape.

Max: And we're starting to see some of these residual effects of the wildfires, even in our big cities. I'm in Ottawa, and we, for the past few summers, have seen orange skies, and we've smelt that smoky campfire air coming from those wildfires.

You know, I'm thirty-three now, and I don't remember this ever being an issue. So is this something that experts are expecting to continue to get worse? Are we in for more orange skies and, and more of that smoky air going forward?

Mike: So the short answer is yes, okay? And, you know, that's the thing about fire is yes, you know, I mentioned Lytton and Jasper and Fort McMurray.

Unfortunately, you know, the town or part of the community was destroyed by fire. But if you live in Ottawa like you do, or Toronto, New York, you know, it's unlikely your place is gonna burn down from a wildland fire. However, fire can travel long distances, so a fire a thousand kilometers away can make your life miserable for weeks.

And the more we know about smoke, the more we realize how bad it is for human health. Global studies suggest 1.5 million people die prematurely every year due to wildland fire smoke. That's just, you know, a horrendous number. And, you know, in Canada, we've seen almost a quadrupling of area burn since the 1970s, and my colleagues and I attribute this largely, not solely, to human-caused climate change.

The warmer we get, the more fire we see. So we expect, as the Earth continues to warm, we expect to see more and more fire in Canada and other places around the globe. So yeah, you're gonna see more smoke, uh, unfortunately. So the bottom line is we have to learn to live with fire and smoke

Max: You mentioned wind as well, and I was gonna ask you, is that, like, a huge component in terms of why the larger cities are experiencing that?

Like, is it necessarily indicative of a huge wildfire season to experience those things down south? Or is it could just be, oh, it's actually, uh, not that bad of a wildfire season, but if the wind is blowing a certain way, we're gonna feel those effects?

Mike: Well, it's a combination of both. The more fire you have, the more smoke you have.

But of course, it does depend on wind direction. So if you have south winds, the smoke's gonna blow over the Arctic or over Greenland or even to Europe, and that's happened on many occasions. So it's, it depends is the answer, which isn't probably all that, uh, comforting, but that's, that's the truth. It depends.

Max: Mark, I wanna turn back to you now. Your focus is obviously more on the data and economic aspects of the wildfires. I just wanna know, how does data actually help us combat wildfires? You know, data can't be used to put out a fire as far as I know. So how do we actually use it to make a difference?

Mark: We're filling in a lot of blanks here.

Before we, we could do this work, we didn't really know how much GDP output was potentially impacted by, by these fires.

Max: Mm-hmm.

Mark: So, um, governments have to make decisions about how they allocate resources, and so it's, it-- this builds a picture about what, how important the potential impacts of these wildfires are and, and how much you have to think about putting effort into mitigating those, those potential impacts o-over time.

You know, if you, if you're gonna adapt to something new, you have to understand the basic scope of, of what the problem is, and I think this, these types of data help, help us to understand it and help us to think about into the future because you can think about, well, we have climate models that can, can help us understand how much more frequent these fires might be.

Um, and therefore, you can begin to think about what the risks are going down the road and how much effort you might need to put into actually mitigating those risks

Max: Yeah, fair enough. I mean, data is invaluable in the sense that we can't solve a problem that we don't understand, right? Precisely. So we also know that the impacts of wildfires are much more pronounced in certain regions more than others.

Can you paint us a picture of which areas are affected the most, and is that changing at all?

Mark: I was just reading, uh, an email I got from my insurer.

Max: Okay.

Mark: Talking about wildfires, you know, sort of highlighting the risks, you, you know, of, of those wildfires. And they were talking about the fact that the world has been changing, and it used to be a Western Canada thing, wildfires, but it's becoming more widespread now.

As I mentioned at, at the start, this was not something you thought much about in the maritime provinces, and now you do. And so increasingly I think of this as a Canada-wide issue just because it is.

Max: So we've been talking a lot about economics, and I think it's really important to acknowledge that economics are not the only types of impacts felt in the wake of these wildfires.

People are forced to evacuate their homes. They may lose priceless personal possessions, sometimes their homes and, uh, you know, whole communities in some cases in, in very severe, severe fires. Yeah. You know, I understand that this might not be either of your areas of expertise, but just on a human level, I think it's important to acknowledge that there are many ways in which these wildfires are devastating that are not measurable in dollars and cents.

Mike: I'm a physical scientist, so I study the physical side. But if you're evacuated, if you've lost your home, that's obviously a stressful situation. It, it affects indigenous communities, you know, disproportionately because many of them are remote northern communities, and that's where fire seems to, to dominate.

So the impacts are real and long-lasting, and that an area that needs study

Mark: Absolutely. I mean, you, uh, you live your, your daily life, your daily routine, and you don't expect to all of a sudden have to pick up and leave your house within 30 minutes and head off to some shelter somewhere or some town-

Mike: Mm-hmm

Mark: down the road, and many Canadians have had to experience that over the past few years. Like in, in 2023, somewhere in the vicinity of 200,000 people had to evacuate their homes. Wow. Um, that's a lot of people, and it's obviously very disruptive to people's lives. I mean, I had cousins of mine in Halifax lived in the same, very near where the fire was in Tantallon.

They were away at their time, but their daughter had to drive through the fire to- Oh, wow ... to get out. So, you know, a lot of people have these stories. It's pretty intense.

Mike: Fire is a natural element of our, of our forests in Canada, and when and where possible, we should let Mother Nature play its natural role.

Of course, you know, if a fire starts two kilometers from your community, that's, we, we obviously can't let that fire burn into the community. But, you know, if it's in a remote area, and we are starting to see more and more fire management agencies allow fire to play their natural role, which at times is beneficial.

You know, a lot, fires aren't necessarily, you know, bad, okay? They're just natural, and our forests have learned to survive and thrive in a regime of semi-regular stand replacing, stand renewing high intensity fire. They, they're built for it.

Max: So what are some of the benefits of letting wildfires burn in areas where they're not necessarily gonna be a danger to human beings?

Mike: So fire is a great agent knocking down pests, you know, like spru- spud worm in these, mountain pine beetle, which devastated millions of hectares in central BC. Fire is a great agent knocking it down. It resets the ecological clock. Uh, you have pioneer species come in, and as I say, you know, our forests survive and thrive in a regime of sometimes, you know, especially the boreal stand replacing fires.

So i- it's just the, the natural role fire plays in our ecosystem. Uh, but the problem is, as we see more and more fire and more and more intense and severe fire, regeneration may be a problem as, you know, especially as we see, you know, things like drought accompanying fire where it's gonna be hard to regenerate.

So we're, we're starting to see the potential development of wastelands or grasslands, uh, that used to be forest. So that, that is a concern.

Max: Do you notice an issue fatigue when it comes to talking about wildfires? We see horrific scenes of these blazes online, but I just feel kinda helpless, and so I click away.

I'm wondering, like, you know, what are some of the real tangible things that we as Canadians can do to help with wildfires apart from becoming a volunteer firefighter?

Mike: So yeah, there's lots of things we can do. First, if you live in a fire-prone place, have a go bag, all right? So that if you have to evacuate, I hope you never do, but you're prepared for it.

Second, programs like FireSmart, uh, have seven principles, and some of these help your home and your community be better pr- protected from wildfire. A lot of it's common sense. Uh, building materials should be non-flammable. That zone around your house, that-- especially that zero to one point five meter, needs to be free of flammable material.

'Cause, you know, what the public probably doesn't understand is that most fires enter, enters the community through a rain of embers, little burning bits of twigs, bark, sometimes even pine cones, that can be carried by the wind kilometers, okay? Uh, West Kelowna fire, McDougall Creek, Jump Lake, Okanagan. So it probably carried burning bits of stuff over three kilometers.

And if it lands on something flammable, like mulch right beside your house, it catches fire and then your house burns down. So check FireSmart out. You put it in your browser, away we go. Also, if you see a fire, report it right away. You know, different jurisdictions have different phone numbers. Some, like BC and Alberta, have apps.

Um, and with-- if you're in doubt, call nine one one, 'cause the sooner we're aware of the fire, then we can deal responsibly with that fire. So these are some of the things you can do. The smoke issue. Uh, so even if you're not in a fire-prone place, everywhere in Canada is prone to smoke at time to time. So, uh, air purifiers in your house.

Uh, avoid vigorous exercise outside. If it's really bad, N95 masks that we wore for COVID were actually developed for wildland fire smoke, so wear a mask, all right? These are things we can do to protect our health.

Max: And Mark, are there any misconceptions around wildfires that you want our listeners to know about?

Mark: The one thing that kind of surprised me a little bit about the numbers is when we looked at the national scale, I saw like less than 1% of GDP. I, you know, naively maybe thought it was going to be higher. Um, but, uh, but at the same time, it's like Toronto wasn't being impacted by the wildfires. Good point.

But at the same time, you know, as, as I said before, when you zero in on particular regions, you see really, really big impacts. So, you know, I think that's sort of-- I'm not sure if that's a misconception per se, but it's sort of just highlighting to me just how lo- ob-obviously localized these, these, these impacts can be.

Max: Mike, I'll pose the same question to you. Are there any misconceptions that you can think of?

Mike: Well, I think we kind of covered a lot of them already. The fire is bad. You know, that's a misconception. Fire is natural. It can have significant impacts, absolutely. Um, fire, how fires enter communities, um, you know, is through that, typically through that rain of burning bits, embers, um- The idea that we can put out all the fires all the time, and that's just not the case.

You know, but, you know, if you got 95% on a test, you think you're doing really well, and that's what, you know, most fire management agencies put out 95% of the fires when they're really small. Uh, but, you know, as mentioned, the tail wags the dog in the fire world, and, you know, 3% of the fires burn most of our area burned and cause most of our impacts.

Max: And Mark, in your opinion, why do you think that these findings, like the research matters? I know we've touched on that al- al- already, but just, you know, on a macro level.

Mark: We live our lives in our local communities and our towns and cities, and a lot of the processes we're exposed to, the phenomena are, are, are very localized in, in nature.

And I think the wildfires are, are a case in point. But a lot of the change we experience are very much about what's happening in our place, in our, in our backyard in a, in a way. And I think this sort of work kind of highlights that, but also highlights the general need, I think, to continue to push to get more and more information that's more local in nature so that people can make those, these local decisions about what's best for them, what's best for their community.

Max: I think just to that point, I mean, this is definitely not your area of expertise in terms of demography, but, like, is there an anticipation if things, you know, continue to get worse in, in those regions that are most affected of, of out migration just in terms of wanting to avoid these fires altogether?

And then how does that affect these communities, right? People don't want to stay. Yeah.

Mark: That's potentially the case. I think there's some research out there where people are trying to see, you know, like, I think there's research in the US trying to see what happens to these places when wildfires come through.

Do businesses reinvest? Do people leave? Mm-hmm. Um, because there is concern about whether insurance rates are gonna go up, where you can get insurance, and, um, so if the risk is high enough. Um, so yeah. And so there is a long-term risk that if this becomes sort of an endemic problem and it's gonna continue to be there, that people may just, may begin to think, think about moving elsewhere or not moving in.

Max: Mm-hmm.

Mark: So, um, but then again, there are places like Los Angeles that have been in, that have been exposed to wildfires for since their start. That's right. People are still there, so.

Max: Yeah. Good point. Are researchers such as yourself here at StatCan gathering data on other areas of concern apart from wildfires?

I imagine measuring GDP exposure could apply to a wide range of natural disasters.

Mark: Absolutely. I mean, uh, we've already done some work looking at, at flooding and, uh, areas impacted by flooding. If you think back to, uh, the BC floods from, from a few years ago, we have a paper out that sort of looks at how much GDP was exposed to those floods.

And so, uh, in, in some ways that was sort of a, a starting point for thinking about the wildfire work.

Mike: Okay.

Mark: Um, but also thinking forward, um, it's-- y-you can imagine we can think about wildfires, we can think about flooding, we can think about, um, uh, sea level rise or droughts, or a number of different cases where the climate might be changing.

Um, and then asking, well, uh, where we think that there, that the change is, is most acute, um, what is hap- what is the output in, in, in, in those particular places?

Max: And in your opinions, what's the biggest story here? What do you want listeners to take away with them from this conversation?

Mike: We're seeing more fire, more impactful fire, higher intensity fire, more severe fire because of human-caused climate change.

I can't be any clearer than that, okay? Uh, it's not responsible for all of it, but studies suggest most of the increases we see are because we're a warmer world, and that's primarily because of humans and their activities, and in particular, the burning of fossil fuels. We, we have to get off fossil fuels.

There's no way, there's no way, way around stopping this warming if we don't

Mark: It's on our agenda to continue to build these data to move beyond GDP to other types of measures. And, and what's, what I think is really, um, good about that is that you begin to almost have this sort of multiplying effect that you have a-- you have, you know what GDP is, you know who's living there, you know what their demographics is or how much they, you know, maybe it's income or, or whatever it might be.

And then you also know all these various physical characteristics of those places and how that might be changing.

Mike: Mm-hmm.

Mark: And to begin to actually build this picture, um, and a picture that might be changing through time and one that, um, I think will be relevant to people as, as the, the world is always changing, be it climate or be it economy or, or, or whatever.

And I think it puts people in a better position, decision-makers, um, to, to use that information, I hope, to make better decisions.

Max: And Mike, if listeners would like to learn more about wildfires, your work, or anything else that you might find important, where should they go?

Mike: So you can put my name in your browser and you'll, you'll hit lots of stuff, but, uh, try TRU Wildfire.

Uh, we, we have a great fire program here. We have diplomas now, certificates, and we're working on trying to get a bachelor's of fire, um, which will be the first in Canada. So check out our website, TRU Wildfire. I also do a fire weather outlook, a five to ten day outlook to say, "Hey, is some extreme fire weather coming?

Where is it coming?" Uh, so kind of trying to build that first early warning system. And so just put that in your browser, wildfire outlook TRU, and it should pop up, and I'm doing the forecast tomorrow. So, uh, you know, so you get a new one tomorrow.

Max: And if you'd like to learn more about the work that Mark Brown and his team are doing here at StatCan, there's an article titled Estimates of Gross Domestic Product in Wildfire Affected Areas during the two thousand and twenty-three and two thousand and twenty-four wildfire seasons.

You can find that and more on StatCan Plus on the StatCan website. Thank you so much, Mike. Thanks for your time and your expertise.

Mike: Enjoyed the conversation.

Max: Thank you so much, Mark. Thanks for coming in and, um, explaining everything, and thanks for your time and your expertise today.

Mark: My pleasure.

Max: You've been listening to Eh Sayers. Thanks to our guests, Mark Brown and Mike Flanagan. If you'd like to learn more about wildfires, please check out the link in our show notes where you can find references for everything that was discussed in today's episode. You can find this show wherever you get your podcasts.

There, you can also find a French version of our show called Écoutez Bien. If you like this show, please rate, review, and subscribe. And as always, thanks for listening