On the afternoon of 3 May 2016, firefighters spotted a plume of smoke near the Canadian oil city of Fort McMurray. It was early in the fire season for the subarctic region and slabs of ice were still floating on its lakes. A water-bombing helicopter was immediately scrambled but it was already too late. Within two hours, flames had roared through 60 hectares (150 acres) of forest. By the end of the day, 90,000 people had been driven from their homes. Whole neighbourhoods had been reduced to ash.
A week later, recalls John Vaillant in Fire Weather, a gripping account that has just won the Baillie Gifford prize for nonfiction, the city looked as if it had suffered a nuclear blast. All that remained of many houses was piles of nails. Sifting through the ashes of her home in what had been a five-storey building, a local journalist found just a colander and some barbecue tools. Even the ceramic toilet had been vaporised.
