Fire Weather: On the Front Lines of a Burning World

by John Vaillant

Fire resembles living things in many ways, but there is a crucial difference: as long as there is sufficient wind, fuel, and dry weather, it never gets tired, and it never sleeps. The people fighting this fire, however, were running out of gas, and so were their trucks. They had now been operating in crisis mode for a day and a half straight, and there was no end in sight. The intensity of physical activity is hard to measure, but a Fitbit tracker on the wrist of the Suncor firefighter Lucas Welsh offers some idea. From when he went on duty at lunchtime on the 3rd until he returned to Site late that first evening, his heart rate stayed at or above 150 beats per minute, with the only dips occurring during location changes in his truck.