Climate-fueled wildfires in the Northwest Territories and Lāhainā, Hawai’i, have laid bare a landscape of poor land management, inadequate infrastructure, and the remnants of a colonial past—with greater devastation to come if better planning isn’t implemented.
In the NWT, fires have driven a record number of evacuees and released 97 megatonnes of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere—277 times more than the total produced by people living there in 2021, reports CBC News. More than 230 fires are actively burning.
In Hawai’i, 115 people died, thousands of others were forced to evacuate, and 380 are still reported missing weeks after a monster grassfire destroyed more than 2,700 buildings in the historic town of Lāhainā August 8.
NWT: Threats to Communities Strain Resources
While the amount of area burned in the Northwest Territories has not yet surpassed the record set in 2014, it is expected to do so by the end of the year. What makes this year especially challenging is that the fires have threatened so many communities, putting a strain on resources, said Dan Thompson, a forest fire research scientist at Natural Resources Canada.
“I think it’s fair to say, although our records are fuzzier, that the scale of human impact for wildfire in the territories would be a record,” he said.
Indigenous people are over-represented among evacuees and will continue to be in future, CBC says, as their communities are typically in very fire-prone environments.
Experts stress that large wildfires are a part of the natural cycle in the NWT and, given the sparse population, they are usually left to burn out on their own. But climate change contributes to conditions that make wildfires more powerful, and the Arctic is warming three to four faster than the global average. Research indicates that the number of lightning strikes—the leading cause of wildfires in the NWT—will increase.
“We can all unequivocally agree this is climate change at the very root of this,” Jessica Davey-Quantick, a territorial wildfire information officer, told media last week.
“We’re going to see more active fire behaviour, more extreme weather, more drought-like conditions—all of those factors have kind of combined. But it’s really hard to say that there’s one culprit that led it to communities this year, when it didn’t in previous years.”
The scale of human displacement is drawing attention to the infrastructure challenges NWT communities face, with communications and transportation greatly affected. The residents of several communities received evacuation orders via letter when fires disrupted telecommunications, and many evacuees from Yellowknife would have been unable to leave had the fires reached Highway 3—the only highway in or out of the community.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said the federal government may need to re-examine how it funds municipal infrastructure projects, with some mayors calling for more stable mechanisms for the region. Federal infrastructure dollars are often disbursed through grants, for which municipalities apply in a competitive process. that gives an edge to larger cities that have more resources to focus on applications. So funds are more likely to go to the “best grant-writer” rather than the “communities that need it most,” explained University of Waterloo climate risk specialist Jason Thistlethwaite.
No More ‘Begging’ for Basics
NWT Premier Caroline Cochrane said she’s done “begging” for federal help to fill infrastructure gaps that make it harder to get people to safety.
“We have been asking the federal government to address our infrastructure gaps for decades,” Cochrane said. “It angered me that we have been pleading and begging to have the same infrastructure that people in the south take for granted. Not extra, just basic infrastructure.”
Hospitals and other health services face unique challenges in Canada’s territories and are vulnerable to wildfires and other climate impacts, explain three NWT health care practitioners, in an opinion piece for the Globe and Mail.
The wildfires should spur Canadians to rethink how the country addresses health and infrastructure challenges in the North, revisit inequitable policies, and centre Indigenous peoples’ knowledge in future policies, say Dr. Courtney Howard, an emergency physician in Yellowknife and vice-chair of the Global Climate and Health Alliance, Nicole Redvers (Deninu Kųę́ First Nation), an associate professor at Western University, and Sarah Cook, a family physician in Yellowknife whose family has been evacuated to Alberta.
“We all need to work together to move our climate reality—that Canada will continue to warm until at least mid-century—into our common vision of the future,” they write.
“A disaster is something that overwhelms local systems, so to prevent that, everyone from decision-makers to community members must make themselves familiar with the temperature and precipitation projections for their area, and have a plan to help through floods, fires, and heat-related emergencies.”
Lāhainā: A ‘Long Road’ for Survivors
In Lāhainā, the devastation was so extensive that nearly a week into recovery efforts on August 14, Governor Josh Green told CBS News there would be “more fatalities that will come,” adding that the fire’s extreme heat made it “hard to recognize anybody.” Search crews could find 10 to 20 people per day until they finish, he said at the time.
And researchers say survivors may face a “long road” of physical and cognitive challenges, from both smoke exposure and trauma.
A mix of land and atmospheric conditions created Hawai’i’s “fire weather” and flash droughts, which experts say are becoming increasingly likely due to climate change.
The event that directly sparked the fires will likely be debated all the way to the courtroom. Maui County is suing local utility Hawaiian Electric, saying the company negligently failed to shut off power despite exceptionally high winds and dry conditions.
In a statement, the utility responded that it is “very disappointed that Maui County chose this litigious path while the investigation is still unfolding”. But it has also filed for bankruptcy as part of “prudent scenario planning.” The utility has conceded that at least one fire was caused by fallen power lines on the morning of August 8, but denied responsibility for a second, later blaze in the Lāhainā area, maintaining that power lines in West Maui had been de-energized for more than six hours by that time.
The Maui Police Department, however, said its barricades were up at the time because of energized lines on the road, reports Hawaii News Now.
Regardless of what sparked the fire, and even as climate change made dry and windy conditions drier and windier, experts are pointing to another problem dangerously raising fire risks in the region: a longstanding mismanagement of land and water use.
“Yes, many parts of Hawai’i are trending towards drier conditions, but the fire problem is mostly attributable to the vast extents of non-native grasslands left unmanaged by large landowners as we’ve entered a ‘post-plantation era,’” said Clay Trauernicht, a fire ecologist at the University of Hawai’i at Manoa.
‘Plantation Capital’ Produces Deadly ‘Tinderbox’
He added that invasive grass species introduced as feed for cattle have added to the threat, turning the island into a “tinderbox.” Rather than decomposing when they die, the desiccated plants remain standing and dry, ready to burn. Similar conditions are fueling fires in the Western United States.
“Land that was once used for agriculture is now more commonly utilized for residential communities, which elevates chances for wildfires,” Trauernicht said. Tropical grasses or shrubs from across the world that thrive in fires take over, and non-native grasses like guinea grass and haole koa significantly increase fire potential.
“The potential for disaster is huge,” said Carla D’Antonio, a professor of ecology at the University of California, Santa Barbara, adding that tragedies like Hawai’i’s are linked to many factors: the alteration of the landscape by humans, the invasion of alien species, droughts made worse by climate change—but also a lack of preparation.
It leaves society with daunting questions to address: “How do we plan for the extreme? Not for the average fire, but the extreme fire?”
Elements of Hawai’i’s landscapes can be reconfigured, Trauernicht suggested, to decrease wildfire vulnerabilities. Options include modifying vegetation, improving grazing practices and irrigation, and planting more trees.
But the problem has deep roots, reports The Guardian. The stage was set for extreme fires nearly 150 years ago—when exploitive policies of land privatization and water depletion enabled pineapple plantation owners (mostly American and European colonists) to deforest large areas of land and extract water from streams. When an 1848 law legitimized private land ownership on the island, big developers began hoarding water for profit. The law didn’t privatize water, but the creation of private property allowed agricultural corporations to wield “political and ultimately oligarchic power” over elected officials, said Jonathan Likeke Scheuer, a water policy consultant and co-author of the book Water and Power in West Maui.
That power imbalance lingers on. The last of the pineapple and sugar cane plantations sold out in 2016—purchased by large investors for real estate speculation—and were overrun with invasive grasses. Century-old irrigation ditches and diverted water were used up to service luxury subdivisions, leaving “scraps for Indigenous families who lived downstream.”
“The rise of plantation capital spawned the drying of the west side of Maui,” said Kamana Beamer, a historian and former member of the Hawai’i Commission on Water Resource Management, which is charged with protecting and regulating water resources. “You can see the link between extractive, unfettered capitalism at the expense of our natural resources and the ecosystem.”
Native Hawai’ians have fought long legal battles over decades to reclaim their water rights and restore depleted streams for traditional practices like sustainable fishing and taro farming. But advocates fear the pressing need for efficient fire response will be used to undo that progress.
Hōkūao Pellegrino, a seventh-generation taro farmer in central Maui, said to reduce wildfire vulnerability, water protections must go beyond returning water to streams and should also resurrect the wetlands and ecosystems that provided a natural buffer against disasters.
“Water is just one piece of the pie,” he said. “Stream restoration needs to be coupled with Native Hawai’ians having access to those lands so they can rebuild the food forest that once was.”
