The ghost of the catastrophic wildfire that swept through Fort McMurray in 2016 is still visible in the form of charred trees that line sections of the highway into town.

The 2016 fire both horrified and transfixed Canadians because it seemed so unusual — apocalyptic videos showed families fleeing suburban homes as ash rained down and flames devoured their neighbourhoods. That a fire could bring a region of 125,000 people, the economic engine of its province, to its knees seemed like a freak event.

It wasn’t. Alberta has always had fires. But as the planet warms and the global climate shifts, wildfires are becoming bigger, more intense, more destructive and more frequent.

Alberta won’t stop burning. Neither will B.C., Ontario, Quebec, the Prairies, the territories, the Maritimes nor any of the 96 per cent of Canada’s communities near forest and grassland.

—Jody Butz, Wood Buffalo fire chief

“We got our eyes opened up here during the wildfire, and shame on us,” said Jody Butz, the fire chief for the Regional Municipality of Wood Buffalo, which encompasses Fort McMurray. “Did we really truly adapt and learn from it?”

No one event can be fully attributed to climate change, and the Fort McMurray fire was probably sparked by a human, but a few compelling factors were at play in how intensely it raged.

That year a below-average snowpack melted early amid unusually hot temperatures. Vegetation baked into perfect wildfire fuel. Some of this was attributable to 2016’s El Nino, a periodic pattern of warm, dry weather that’s becoming more powerful. Longer fire seasons and more incidents of extreme fire weather are also caused by climate change, and likely contributed to the wildfire’s intensity, the federal government found.

In Alberta, 52 percent of the population sees solid or conclusive evidence climate change is happening, according to a 2018 poll by Canada’s Ecofiscal Commission, an independent economics organization. Of those people, 46 per cent think the warming was caused by natural patterns, not human activity.