Fire Weather: On the Front Lines of a Burning World

by John Vaillant

Even though we use the terms “oil” and “gas” in casual conversation, as if they were familiar to us, few of us ever actually see them. For most of us, they are abstractions, code words for what we’re really talking about, which is fire and money. Whether it is a teaspoon of butane in a pocket lighter, fifteen gallons of unleaded in a car’s gas tank, two thousand tons of heavy oil in a freighter’s fuel oil bunkers, or five thousand gallons of Jet A in a 737’s wings, its ultimate purpose is to burn—to be transformed into fire and the energy that combustion represents. Until then, it waits patiently for one of us—a smoker, a driver, a captain, a pilot, a cook, an arsonist—to summon it forth. Most of us never even see the flames we’ve conjured up: the car just drives; the plane just flies; the shower just gets hot. The stove burner is not “on fire” but a blue flower blooming—day and night, all year round—so simple and safe and, above all, contained, even a child can use it.