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The alarming expanse of the Smokehouse Creek Fire in Texas, visible from space, alongside the premature onset of Alberta’s fire season, marks 2024 as another devastating year of wildfires in North America.
“More than a million acres have burned,” United States Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas told CNN, describing the extent of the Smokehouse Creek fire—which razed cattle ranches, ravaged homes, and killed two people. “And we are in winter, and this is the largest fire in Texas history.”
“We, as a country and as a world, have to be ready for the increasing effects of extreme weather caused by climate change,” Mayorkas added. “It’s a remarkable phenomenon, and it will manifest itself in the days to come, and we have to prepare for it now.”
Wildfire concerns were on the agenda in Canada just days before Smokehouse Creek ignited. “Canada’s emergency preparedness minister is warning that this year’s wildfire season will be worse than the record-breaking season of 2023, when thousands of fires burned tens of millions of acres and set off massive plumes of smoke that enveloped major U.S. cities, including New York and Washington,” writes New York Times Ottawa correspondent Ian Austen.
In British Columbia Premier, David Eby laid out the province’s preparations. Those measures included “standing up an army of firefighters,” making agreements to lease aircraft and helicopters, and discussions with the military.
“We’re just profoundly worried about the situation we face,” he said.
In neighbouring Alberta, the government had already declared the start of its fire season in late February, 10 days earlier than its usual start on March 1.
Experts say environmental changes like escalating temperatures and heightened dryness are conditions conducive to fires.
“Fire season is starting much earlier than it did before and it ends later” across the continent, said Brett L’Esperance, CEO of Dauntless Air. The company’s crews deployed aircraft last year to combat wildfires across North America, including in Canada during its worst wildfire season on record.
Smokehouse Creek Fire Visible from Space
In Texas, Governor Greg Abbot issued a disaster declaration last Tuesday for 60 counties endangered by fires, with five active blazes remaining in the area as of Sunday. The largest of the fires—the Smokehouse Creek Fire that started in Hutchinson County—spread over 4,921 square kilometres into neighbouring Oklahoma, and was 15% contained. It killed at least two people, and was so large it could be seen from space, wrote Bloomberg.
Oklahoma Forestry Services spokesperson Keith Merckx said fire crews were making progress and estimated that the Smokehouse Creek Fire would be 75% contained by end of day Monday. But that later appeared unlikely, CNN reported Monday afternoon.
The fire has wrought devastation across the Texas Panhandle, where farmers and ranchers have seen their land and livestock destroyed. Facilities like oil refineries and a nuclear arms plant have also been under threat. Early assessments suggest that at least 500 structures were destroyed by fires, with more to be revealed as the flames are brought under control.
“When you look at the damages that have occurred here, it’s just completely gone, nothing left but ashes on the ground,” Abbott said as he travelled to the region to survey the damage. “Those who are affected by this have gone through utter devastation.”
Abbot said the fire’s cause is under investigation, but lawyers and landowners have identified a downed power line owned by Minnesota-owned Xcel Energy as a potential trigger. A lawsuit has already been filed by a homeowner against Xcel and Osmose Utilities Services, a company hired to help inspect Xcel’s power lines but did not adequately do so, according to the suit. Xcel says it will cooperate with officials while conducting its own investigation into the fire’s cause.
(Billionaire and Berkshire-Hathaway chairperson Warren Buffett recently wrote in his annual letter to investors that utilities are no longer safe investments because of risk from wildfire damages.)
An expected shift in the weather with cooler temperatures and lighter winds on Monday and Tuesday could offer an opportunity to rein the fires in. But so far, stoked by unseasonably high temperatures and other weather factors, their spread has been extreme. Another contributing factor was higher than average rainfall earlier in the winter, leading to thick grass growth that is feeding the fire.
“There’s a lot of fuel on the ground,” said Jason Nedlo, a Texas A&M Forest Service spokesperson. “When you add high winds and low humidity to high fuel load levels, that’s when you get the conditions that are ripe for large, fast-burning wildfires.”
The overall risk of wildfires in Texas has been rising as a result of climate change, experts say. State temperatures have risen 0.61°F (around 0.3°C) per decade since 1975, while relative humidity has gone down. By increasing the number of hot, dry days in the year, climate change is making the fire season start earlier and end later.
“There were clear fire seasons for Texas in the past, but fires have become a year-round threat,” Yongqiang Liu, a meteorologist at the U.S. Forest Service’s Southern Research Station, told The New York Times.
Fire Seasons Worsen Across U.S., Canada
Texas is not the only state at greater risk. The National Weather Service has indicated critical or elevated fire risk across much of the central U.S., in states near Texas like New Mexico and Oklahoma, across nearly all of Nebraska, Iowa, and Kansas, large swaths of Missouri and South Dakota, and in smaller portions of Colorado, Wyoming, Minnesota, and Illinois.
Across the border, Canada is preparing for a wildfire year that could be worse than the historic 2023 fire season, when record areas of forest burned. Some fires from last summer never ended, with nearly 150 “zombie” fires continuing to burn throughout the winter under snow-covered ground. While some zombie fires do usually persist from year to year, the number held over from last year is unprecedented.
Other factors are also priming the season for greater burning in Canada, with both climate change and the current El Niño weather pattern producing higher-than-average temperatures and lower winter precipitation across much of the country, leaving land and forests drier than usual.
“The ground is very dry. There’s been no snowpack,” said Kent Moore, a professor of atmospheric physics at the University of Toronto Mississauga. “It’s going to impact wildfires, because really dry conditions just essentially make it easier for wildfires to get started.”
