Episode 3
The Fort McMurray fire had quadrupled in size within just a few days. Firefighters struggled. It felt like one of the worst bombing raids inflicted on Hamburg, Germany in WW2.
In May 2016, Fort McMurray, Alberta, the hub of Canada’s oil industry, was overrun by wildfire. The multi-billion-dollar disaster turned entire neighbourhoods into firebombs and drove 90,000 people from their homes in a single afternoon.
Through the story of this apocalyptic conflagration, John Vaillant explores the past and the future of our ever-hotter, more flammable world.
For hundreds of millennia, fire has been a partner in our evolution, shaping culture and civilization. Yet in our age of intensifying climate change, we are seeing its destructive power unleashed in ways never before witnessed by human beings.
John Vaillant delves into the intertwined histories of the oil industry and climate science, the unprecedented devastation wrought by modern wildfires, and the lives forever changed by these disasters.
Winner of the Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction
Abridged by Polly Coles
Read by Kerry Shale
Produced by Clive Brill
A Brill production for Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ Radio 4
Last on
Broadcasts
- Wed 14 Feb 2024 09:45Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ Radio 4 FM
- Thu 15 Feb 2024 00:30Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ Radio 4