The news this week is all about getting burned. In B.C. we’re told that forests ravaged by fire this year are already nearly triple the 10-year average, with costs of fighting them expected to soar to $400 million. With newly-imposed water restrictions, Vancouver lawns display shades of burned brown. On normally lush Fraser Valley farms, the hot weather is scorching crops, leaving one visiting trucker to off-load surplus blueberries on our trading floor this week. Somehow the perceived hardships resulting from rules against washing your car in Vancouver pale in relation to wildfires causing families to be burned out of Interior homes.

There are other reports of getting burned in the news today. The summer sun has reportedly brought out a new trend where Darwin award candidates are using sunscreen to draw designs on their bodies. The bright idea is to get a severe sunburn so that the design created by the sun is visible. Meanwhile gold investors’ portfolios are getting burned rather than burnished. And there are other burning issues today besides Canadian lumber stocks. Today’s column by Barbara Yaffe in The Vancouver Sun reports that homebuyers risk getting burned by home inspections because there is a lack of independence between the home inspection industry and realtors. Do the bulldozers really care?

In the wider world there is more talk around the nuclear deal with Iran as Congress prepares to debate the issue over whether it’s a good deal or a bad deal in which some suggest the West and Israel will surely “get burned”. This week came news of hackers accessing a website teed up to facilitate philanderers. Playing in those websites is said to hold risks of getting burned. Some might say this alludes to the kind of burning ring of fire that Johnny Cash used to sing about.

Some might question just what does all this have to do with the price of 2×4’s? But in conclusion, a lumber trader was heard to say that even amid reports Americans bought homes in June at the fastest rate in over eight years, there is risk of getting burned in the cumulative build-up of excessive household debt in Canada. But for some lumber traders, it was Starbucks recall of tea pitchers that really caught our eye, after some customers were cut and burned by breaking/leaking glass. We depend on that stop each morning to offer up encouragement for the day – to be rendered risk-free of getting burned – if you don’t count the price paid in depleted loonies.