Cooler temperatures and some rain. The weather forecast for the past few hours brought some hope, Monday, August 21, to firefighters in Western Canada, who are fighting against numerous forest fires.
“It’s a scary and upsetting time,” acknowledged Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. “From coast to coast, Canadians are watching in horror as the scenes of apocalyptic devastation and fires unfold,” he added hours before a crisis meeting.
All eyes are on the country’s westernmost province, British Columbia, which is in a state of emergency and has more than 380 fires, including 14 megafires and 157 wildfires, according to local authorities.
Over the weekend, two fires that threaten large areas of the Okanagan Valley, including the cities of Kelowna and neighboring West Kelowna, coalesced. The blaze resulting from this merger, located in the Shuswap region, 500 kilometers northeast of Vancouver, now covers more than 41,000 hectares, four times the area of ??Paris.
Jason Brolund, West Kelowna Fire Chief, however, offered a note of optimism for the first time Sunday, August 20 during a press conference. “We finally feel like we’re moving forward, rather than backwards,” he said. Temperatures are indeed cooler on Monday and a little rain is expected from Tuesday. “Difficult days are yet to come,” authorities warned, however, and thick smoke continues to suffocate the region.
” Panic “
“We don’t want to go out because there’s too much smoke. It’s foggy, it smells like barbecue, it looks like a sandstorm. There are a lot of people who left in panic,” Thaïs Poujade, a 15-year-old high school student from Lyon, told Agence France-Presse on a school exchange in Kelowna.
This city of 150,000 inhabitants, located 150 kilometers south of Shuswap, where thousands of people had to evacuate, has been drowned for several days in thick, fragrant smoke visible more than 100 kilometers around the city. “It’s heartbreaking to see the city burning. They do their best to stop him, but it’s not enough. Most of my friends have already left,” reports Bogi Bagosi, a 16-year-old high school student.
Around 30,000 residents of the province have been issued an evacuation order while another 36,000 are on high alert to flee at any time.
In Canada’s Far North, firefighters are also hard at work containing a large fire that threatened the capital of the Northwest Territories. The few drops that fell this weekend made things a little easier for them.
Two-thirds of the territory’s population remains displaced, including residents of Yellowknife, now a ghost town. Only emergency services personnel remained on site to build firewalls.
“With a little help from the weather over the past few days and a lot of good firefighting efforts, we’ve been able to contain this situation for now,” said Mike Westwick, local firefighting officer. of forest.
Fourteen million hectares burned
Canada has faced extreme weather events in recent years, the intensity and frequency of which have been increased by climate change. This year, 14 million hectares – about the size of Greece – have burned, double the last record from 1989.
The fires started in Alberta where a state of emergency had to be declared in May due to an unprecedented situation. A few weeks later, Nova Scotia, an Atlantic province with a very mild climate, and especially Quebec were in turn caught in megafires before it was the turn of the west and north of the country to ignite.
It is mainly the boreal forest that goes up in smoke, far from inhabited areas, but with serious consequences for the environment.