Alberta

The world is ablaze – yet climate chaos still takes us by surprise

In the light of recent fire emergencies on the Greek islands and in the wider Mediterranean, this book has just acquired even more relevance. It centres on another catastrophe in May 2016, a Canadian inferno nicknamed the ‘Beast’, which has become the most expensive natural disaster in the country’s history. Within three weeks, Fort McMurray’s blaze had incinerated an area the size of Cumbria Within five days of its discovery, the blaze had forced the mass evacuation of 90,000 residents from the city of Fort McMurray in Alberta Province. In just three weeks, egged on by an El Niño cycle as well as fierce winds and record temperatures across America’s