A tale of two fires

Forest fires are ravaging Canada’s province of Alberta and India’s Uttarakhand state. The Canadian blaze around Fort McMurray has swept through around 170,000 hectares destroying at least a fifth of the homes in the town of 88,000 people, all of whom had to be evacuated. The blaze in Uttarakhand is out. It destroyed only 1,900 hectares and killed six. But the Indian inferno points to a far larger disaster than that being faced by the people of western Canada. In mountainous Uttarakhand alone, there have been 1,800 fires since February. Some 65 percent of the state is forestry. Large areas of woodland have been burned down and within them scattered homes and villages. India as a whole is suffering drought and the monsoon rains have been late and limited. Uttarakhand with its lush Alpine meadows, rushing mountain streams and iconic Vasudhara Falls, where water plunges 122 meters, may not seem an obvious candidate for drought. But changing weather patterns have currently turned the state into a tinderbox. The key challenge for Uttarakhand has been the accessibility of water. There is far less of it than there should be at this time of year. Worse, after almost non-stop engagement with one blaze after another, the local firemen are exhausted. Their equipment has taken a battering. Hoses are leaking. Some of the pumps they use to recharge fire engines or feed water from rivers and dams to a nearby fire are worn out. The lack of water has meant that these conflagrations have had to be tackled by beaters. Locals have brought large paddles to smack out the flames in the dry grass and leaves beneath the trees or along the borders of roads. Precious water is only used afterwards to damp down potential hot spots, which could cause the fire to break out again. In both Canada and India, high winds have made the firefighters problems worse. In Canada this meant that the water bombing by aircraft was not only hazardous because of more difficult flying conditions but was also less efficient because the wind dispersed the water. No such massive water bombing effort was available in Uttarakhand. In the last three days it has been nature itself, which has water-bombed the state’s Himalayan slopes. Persistent rain has dampened everything. Uttarakhand, which economically is India’s second fastest-growing state, will recover from the fires, though it will take years for the forest canopy to be restored. Yet the drought, which has played a key part on the conflagrations in both Canada and India, remains of the greatest concern. For whatever reason, the global climate is changing and the effects are proving to be profound. And it is the unpredictability of the changes that perhaps presents the greatest challenges. Just three years ago Uttarakhand was the victim of what the Indian press dubbed “The Himalayan Tsunami”. Days of torrential and unrelenting downpours caused devastating floods and landslides. Almost 6,000 people perished. While the authorities in Uttarakhand can breathe a sigh of relief, for the moment at least, those in Alberta are still wrestling with the Fort McMurray inferno. However winds are dropping and some rain is expected. These two great fires highlight the wider question of flood and drought across the world and the urgent need to plan for the consequent changes.