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The devastating wildfire that was still making headlines when the Northwest Territories issued an and .

in advance of a wall of flame from out-of-control wildfires converging on the capital city. Yet this isn’t the first time an entire Canadian town has been cleared.

In May 2016, all 90,000 residents of Fort McMurray, Alta., were evacuated shortly before wildfires engulfed with a total cost of more than .

In 2017 in British Columbia, the wildfire season led to the evacuation of more than in firefighting costs.

Let’s not forget the June 2021 heat dome resulting in temperature records being broken across British Columbia three days in a row. The heat wave culminated in Lytton, a village in the southern part of the province, , the hottest temperature ever observed anywhere in Canada and breaking the previous record by five degrees. The next day, , destroying more than 90 per cent of the town.

Long, hot summer

The summer of 2023 is one for the record books. June and July were the warmest months ever recorded, and .

By mid-July, Canada had already recorded . And British Columbia broke . With several weeks to go in the 2023 forest fire season, more than has already been consumed by wildfires.

And yet, this pales in comparison to what arising from greenhouse gas emissions released through the combustion of fossil fuels.

Predicted outcomes

This year’s fire season record will be broken in the near future as warming continues. And once again, it’s not as if what’s happening is a surprise.

Almost 20 years ago, my colleagues and I showed that there already was . We wrote:

“The area burned by forest fires in Canada has increased over the past four decades, at the same time as summer season temperatures have warmed. Here we use output from a coupled climate model to demonstrate that human emissions of greenhouse gases and sulfate aerosol have made a detectable contribution to this warming. We further show that human-induced climate change has had a detectable influence on the area burned by forest fire in Canada over recent decades.”

It appears little has been done to prepare rural Canada for what’s in store as governments deal with immediate, rather than to wildfire management.

This, despite the existence of the national designed to assist homeowners, neighbourhoods and communities decrease their vulnerability to wildfires and increase their resilience to their negative impacts.

Forest management practices including , and the use of glyphosate to actively kill off broadleaf plant species, will all have to be reassessed from a .

Growing number of court cases

Pressure is certainly mounting on decision-makers to become more proactive in both mitigating and preparing for the impacts of climate change.

An from the Montana First Judicial District Court sided with a group of youth who claimed that the State of Montana violated their right to a healthy environment.

A similar case brought by seven youth against the Ontario government after the province reduced its greenhouse gas reduction targets has also been .

As the number of such court cases grow, governments and corporations will need to do more to both protect their citizens from the impacts of climate change, and to aggressively decarbonize energy systems.

I wouldn’t be surprised if the Alberta government is next to be taken to court by youth after Premier Danielle Smith’s outrageous economic and environmental .

States of emergency

While attention is currently turned to the evacuation of Yellowknife, it’s sobering to remind ourselves that they are not alone. The village of Lytton, burnt to the ground just two years ago, has been as wildfires approach.

Kelowna has just as the McDougall Creek fire starts consuming homes in the region. And this, coming on the heels of the 20th anniversary of the , when more than 27,000 people had to be evacuated and 239 Kelowna homes were lost.

Canadians will take solace as summer turns into winter and the immediacy of our 2023 wildfire situation wanes. Unfortunately, it will be Australia’s turn next to experience the burning wrath of nature in response to human-caused global warming and the 2023 El Niño.

Rather than waiting to respond reactively to the next fire season, proactive preparation is the appropriate way forward. For as the old adage states: an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.