© British Columbia Wildfire ServiceAn aerial view of the Texas Creek wildfire in British Columbia, Canada, provided by the British Columbia Wildfire Service on July 9, 2023.
The area burned this year, in just six and a half months, is roughly equivalent to the size of Portugal or Iceland.
In total, 4,088 fires have occurred since January, including many blazes that have scorched hundreds of thousands of hectares.
More than 150,000 people have been displaced, and a 19-year-old firefighter died Thursday.
"We're dealing with immense areas," Colonel Philippe Sansa, who heads a detachment of French firefighters deployed in hard-hit northern Quebec, told AFP.
"The fire we're managing is 65 kilometers (40 miles) long, which poses enormous organizational challenges."
Sansa said his team, in France, would be able to deploy far more firefighters and helicopters on a blaze 100 times smaller.
The majority of fires have occurred far from inhabited areas - but they still have serious consequences for the environment.
"We find ourselves this year with figures that are worse than our most pessimistic scenarios," Yan Boulanger, a researcher at Canada's natural resources ministry, told AFP.
"What has been completely crazy is that there has been no respite since the beginning of May," he said.
As of Saturday, there were 906 active fires in the country, including 570 deemed out of control - with no province spared.
The dire situation has shifted across the country in recent months: In May, at the beginning of the wildfire season, Alberta in the west was the center of attention, with unprecedented blazes.
Several weeks later, Nova Scotia, an Atlantic province with a mild climate, took up the baton, followed by Quebec, where huge fires created plumes of smoke that even blanketed parts of the United States.
Since the beginning of July, the situation has taken a dramatic turn in British Columbia, with more than 250 fires starting in just three days last week, mostly triggered by lightning.
Reader Comments
I totally beleive there was nothing to indicate that:
- the sporadic combustion of all different forest types,
- in all different regions of a 10,000,000 sq/km area,
- all at the same time,
- most with no cloud cover per satellite imagery,
- stopping abruptly at the southern political border,
- were all caused by lightening,
and in and of itself was anything out of the ordinary.
And having been a forest fire fighter I know the smell, it is unmistakeable. Never had a whiff but they closed the Skydome. Yet when the praries were on fire many years ago, Calgary was just business as usual, just a bit of stinky smell to deal with. Nothing to see here folks.
The idiotic season of ARSON has begun once again, they are TRULY desperate to rub this CO2 BOLLOCKS in everyone's faces.
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CDF used to cut fire breaks, fire access roads, employ an give opportunity to low risk prisoners, maintain the forests.
Not anymore. Lobbyists here have stopped all common sense, proven, time tested wildfire prevention.
Meanwhile in the 7 bay area counties big, block type "appt housing" is being built up an down the rail corridor. Currently all empty
These "fires" are meant to burn an chase people from their self sustaining rural lifestyle into the controlled "city zones"
Damn, Was Neal Peart a prophet or time traveler? That dude was spot on. On every level.
So that being said, Im taking my red barchetta out, see if i cant outrun two alloy air cars, whislt laughing out loud with fear and hope