Canada may eventually count that as a successful evacuation, and the fact that people survived matters most. But a community shouldn’t have to empty itself into fishing boats moments before it burns for the emergency system to be considered a success.
The frightening part is that this isn’t simply one community’s terrible luck. It is the latest scene in a much larger change taking place across North America.
Since the 1970s, the average area burned annually by Canadian wildfires has more than doubled. Canada still averages roughly 7,000 fires a year, but the number of fires is no longer the most revealing measure. The fires that escape initial control are burning more land, lasting longer and becoming harder to contain. The Canadian government warns that the annual area burned could double again by the end of this century.³
The American West has undergone a similar transformation. A major study comparing the years before and after the mid-1980s found that large western forest fires became nearly four times as frequent. They burned about five times as long, and the active fire season grew by 78 days. The acreage burned by large forest fires increased severalfold.⁴
That doesn’t mean every landscape burns more often than it did a century ago. Some western forests once burned frequently in smaller, cooler fires that cleared brush without destroying mature trees. Indigenous communities used carefully managed fire for many of the same purposes.
Then came a century of aggressive suppression. Smaller fires were extinguished, vegetation accumulated and many forests became unnaturally dense. We reduced fire for decades while quietly storing the fuel for something much worse.
Climate change arrived on top of that.
Hotter air draws moisture from trees, brush and soil. Snow melts earlier, giving forests more time to dry. Heat waves last longer, humidity drops and nights often no longer cool enough to slow an active fire. Canada’s fire season is lengthening, and wildland fire is increasing even in some regions that historically experienced much less burning.⁵
Climate change doesn’t have to strike the match. Lightning, machinery, power lines, railways and human carelessness can all supply an ignition. Climate change alters the landscape in which that spark lands.
One influential study estimated that human-caused warming accounted for roughly half of the increase in western U.S. forest-fuel dryness between 1979 and 2015. The researchers calculated that warming contributed about 10.4 million additional acres of forest fire during that period—nearly doubling the area that would otherwise have burned.⁶
That is the lesson in the yellow sky over New Hampshire. Climate change is no longer only a prediction about sea levels at the end of the century or a small number on a temperature chart. It is something you can smell. It irritates your eyes. It sends children indoors in New England while families hundreds of miles away run toward boats.
The danger is distributed very unequally. We get the smoke. The people of Collins Lake lost their community.
Climate change also exposes decisions made long before the flames arrived. It didn’t decide that Namaygoosisagagun would have no all-season road. It didn’t determine whether residents would have adequate pumps, local firefighting crews, satellite communications, firebreaks or more than one route out. It didn’t decide whether rooms would be waiting when evacuees reached Thunder Bay.
Those are human choices.
Canada’s auditor general found that Indigenous Services Canada spent approximately $646 million on emergency response and recovery over four fiscal years, compared with about $182 million on preparedness and mitigation.