For several months, the Canadian forests have been affected by gigantic fires. Because of these particularly dangerous fires, Canada has set a new record for area burned.
Intensifying conflagration in North America. More than 10 million acres burned in Canada this year, far more than anything the country has ever seen.
While no province was spared, the country has recorded a total of 4,088 wildfires since January and 906 fires were still active as of Saturday, including 570 that were considered out of control. The previous record of burned area was 7.3 million hectares in 1989, according to national figures from the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Center (CIFFC).
Serious consequences for the environment
The scale of the fires and the number of them mean that the authorities do not intervene and therefore let most of them burn. It is mainly the boreal forests that are going up in smoke far away from inhabited areas. However, with serious consequences for the environment.
“We’re facing numbers this year that are worse than our most pessimistic scenarios,” Yan Boulanger, a researcher at Canada’s Department of Natural Resources, told AFP. “It’s completely crazy that there hasn’t been a break since the beginning of May,” analyzed the forest fire specialist.
At the beginning of the season, in May, it was Alberta in the west that concentrated all the concerns, as it was very quickly confronted with an unprecedented situation. A few weeks later, Nova Scotia, an Atlantic province with a very mild climate, and Quebec in particular, were again hit by mega fires.
And since early July, the situation in British Columbia has taken a dramatic turn when more than 250 fires, mostly sparked by lightning, broke out in three days over the past week.
A complicated geographical situation
Large parts of Canada are suffering from a severe drought, with months of well-below-average rainfall and warm temperatures.
Due to its geographic location, the country is warming faster than the rest of the world and has faced extreme weather events in recent years, the intensity and frequency of which have increased due to climate change.
According to government figures released on Saturday, the number of 10 million hectares will continue to rise in the coming weeks.