Canada continues to suffer through a terrible wildfire season, with all signs pointing to it being the worst in more than 30 years. With evacuations occurring in various communities across the country, and the resulting smoke producing air quality warnings across large parts of the US, and even Europe, concerns remain about how long the fires will persist, and whether expected rainfall will be enough to extinguish the fires or give firefighters a chance to get them under control, according to reporting by CBS News. Says Katia Petit, Quebec associate deputy minister for civil protection, of the fires in province, to The Associated Press, “If enough rain falls, it will allow SOPFEU [the province’s forest fire prevention agency] personnel to intensify their work directly in the field, to work on the fires and prevent them from starting up again once the dry weather returns.”
Across the rest of the country, Canadian officials have also made the wildfires a top priority, declaring a national preparedness level 5, and deploying all available resources to bring them under control, including support from firefighters from the United States, New Zealand, Australia, and South Africa.
As of June 26, the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre reported almost 30,000 square miles of forests and other land had been burned by wildfires in 2023, breaking the record previously set in 1989.
Source:
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/map-canadian-wildfires-2023-where-are-the-fires-ontario-quebec/
https://apnews.com/article/canada-wildfires-smoke-quebec-rain-a0e287ea5117cccadb9e6917304635ea
