Canada continues to grapple with a staggering number of over 400 ongoing wildfires.
Over the weekend, numerous provinces and the Northwest Territories in Canada were relentlessly battered by an overwhelming tally of over 400 ongoing wildfires. The majority of these destructive blazes were concentrated in Quebec, Alberta, and British Columbia.
According to the latest report from the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre, Friday’s national overview revealed a mounting number of uncontrollable fires on the West Coast. The scorching, arid conditions fueled the flames, resulting in a fresh wave of evacuation orders and alerts. Quebec stood out with the highest count of active fires, reaching a staggering 139. Regrettably, only a small fraction of these fires are currently being suppressed due to the strained resources of the province’s firefighting authorities.
As of Friday evening, the center documented a staggering 2,414 fires and an extensive 4.5 million hectares consumed by these blazes since the beginning of the year. This makes it the most active start to a wildfire season ever recorded.
On Friday, Quebec’s Public Security Minister, François Bonnardel, expressed his intention to have approximately 1,200 individuals actively combatting the wildfires in his province by Monday. This would involve the deployment of hundreds of firefighters from the United States, Portugal, and Spain, who are anticipated to join forces with their counterparts from France and New Brunswick.
The aim is to bolster the firefighting efforts with an international collaboration. To date, an alarming expanse of nearly 700,000 hectares of forest has already succumbed to the flames in Quebec. This magnitude of destruction is over 500 times greater than the average recorded during the same period in the past decade.
