Sometimes it takes a disaster like Fort McMurray to make us prepare for the next one: Don Pittis

When JimFaughtwent looking for a group of missing teenagers near the isolated community ofNakina, Ont.,about 150 kilometresnorth of Lake Superior,he made a grisly discovery.

In a horriblehuman disaster, the seven charred bodiesFaughtfound had only hours ago been vigorous 16- and 17-year-olds working in Ontario's junior ranger program and their 25-year-old junior rangerleader.

Experts say all too often it takesdisasters ascostly as theFortMcMurrayfiretomake us change our ways.The tragedyinNakinais a horrible example of that process.

• FortMcMurrayfire could cost insurers $9B
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Like almost all so-called natural disasters, from floods to bear attacks,nature only causes problems becausehumans fail to recognize and prepare for its power. In theNakinacase, while the deadly force of nature was a forest fire, it had been lit by humans.

ForFaught,who was working as an ignition boss on the 1979 fire, the details are etched into his memory. The young people had beenhelping with a prescribed burn, a process where foresters usefire to prepare a patch of land for replanting.

"As they came to the top of the hill they noticed they were encircled by fire because somebody had lit the other side of the block which they understood was not going to happen," saysFaught, a professional forester who is now a principal at the consulting agencyLURA.

While theseven were unfamiliar with fires, they were accompanied by an experienced firefighter who got the young people to clear brush away froma patch ofopen ground. His idea wasto make the leading edge of the fireless hot in that patch once the fire reached them, allowing them to run through like a lion jumping through a flaming hoop.

"He asked them to follow him through the flames," saysFaught. "He went through and they didn't follow him."

The firefighter suffered burns but lived. The seven took shelter in an unburned patch of forest anddid not. The coroner determined they had died of smoke inhalation.

Swift action

Following theNakinatragedy, Ontario's Ministry of Natural Resourcestookswift action. It immediately banned inexperienced junior rangers from working on forest fires. Following an exhaustive inquiry, it introduced strict rules governing prescribed burns that were shared across the country.

When they are costly enough either in human life or in dollars and cents governments are forced by public opinion to try to prevent similar disasters from happening again.

Until last week,Quebec's 1998icestorm was Canada's most expensive natural disaster, with insurance claims alone worth$1.9 billion in inflation-adjusted terms. In the aftermath, Hydro Quebec spent millions trying to make its systemice-storm resistant, includingincreasing the physical strength of towers and poles.

Following Canada's next most expensive disaster,Alberta's 2013floods that cost insurers $1.8 billion,governments have moved to shore up river banks and improvewarning systems.

• Crunching the numbers: Fort McMurray fire latest in Alberta's string of expensive disasters

It's harder to convince people to prepare for a disaster that hasn't happened. For instance, critics ofVancouver's earthquake preparedness say sometimes even officials don't take planning for"the big one"seriously.

Brian Stocks, who investigated theNakinatragedy and the massive fire inSlave Lake, Alta.,in 2011,says until a big disaster strikes,many people have trouble listening toexpertadvice.

'Attention span of a ferret'

"We're in a society nowadays where people have the attention span of a ferret on a double espresso," says Stocks, who used to be a senior forest fireresearch scientist at the Canadian Forest Service.

Before retiring from that job,Stocks was one of the first to warn of the impending effects of climate change on fires in the boreal forest that stretches across the continent from Alaska to the Atlantic.

Long before the blaze in FortMcMurray, and thesimilar one in Slave Lake, Stocks and his colleagueswarnedthatas human activity reached deeper into the northern forest, disasters were going to becomemore, not less, likely to happen.

Perversely, efficient fire suppression creates a buildup of dead wood and other fuels making forests more fire-prone.

"It's not economically possible or ecologically feasible to try to eliminate fire from the forest," says Stocks. "You build a huge oil complex in the middle of a forest ecosystem that is designed to burn forests regenerate themselves through fire."

Stocks says the problem will become even worse if climate change increases the frequency and intensity of fires.

There are ways of helpingindustrialinstallations and communities to prepare for fires,but Stocks worries thatperhaps because fires in any one communityare historicallyrare, those preparations areoften ignored.

Zero risk?

Previous reports have recommended a two-kilometrefirebreak around communities andthe removal of trees and forest debrisin residential areas. Stocks says people complain that's ugly. There are alsoways to make homes and public buildings more fire-resistant, but as with earthquake-proofing, it's more expensive.

Only a post-fire investigation will determinewhether the long list of recommended fire prevention techniques would have saved the guttedhomes and buildings ofFortMcMurray.

There is no such thing as zero risk. But following theNakinatragedy, Canadian forestfirefighterdeaths have becomerare and there has never been another person killed in a prescribed burn. Perhaps the losses in FortMcMurraybecause they are so devastating will have a similar effect.

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