Canadian Wildland Fire Situation for June 2, 2023
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An aircraft disperses a mix of water and fire retardant over a fire near Barrington Lake in Shelburne County, N.S. on May 31.HO/The Canadian Press
No relief in sight as wildfires burn across the country
By Mike Hager, The Globe and Mail, June 1, 2023
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-no-relief-in-sight-as-wildfires-burn-across-the-country/
A severe start to wildfire season has scorched 10 times the average amount of terrain burned during these first weeks over the past decade, leading Ottawa to warn that fires in eight provinces and the Northwest Territories are stretching Canada’s firefighting corps perilously thin with no immediate relief in sight.
Federal Emergency Preparedness Minister Bill Blair told reporters Thursday that this level of wildfire activity on June 1 is unprecedented, forcing tens of thousands of people to flee their homes and burning the equivalent of five million American football fields, or an area almost five times the size of Prince Edward Island. . .
As the situation in Alberta grew quickly out of control in early May, the Canadian military moved in to help, and the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre also helped commission firefighters from other provinces and other countries.
Wildfires across the country have so far devoured about 27,000 square kilometres of land, dwarfing the national 10-year average of roughly 500 square kilometres, he said.
“These conditions early in the season are unprecedented,” Blair said, adding that Canada is facing a “dangerous” situation. . .
As of mid-afternoon Thursday, the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre was reporting 209 active fires burning in eight provinces as well as in the Northwest Territories and 87 of them were out of control.
There are about 28,000 people currently evacuated from their homes, including 18,000 in Nova Scotia alone.
There were 25,000 evacuees in Alberta in May, with 4,325 of them still out of their homes owing to six active evacuation orders, according to a provincial update Thursday evening.
Several small communities in northeastern B.C. were under orders to leave their homes Thursday as well.
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