Quebec, hard hit by historic fires, is impatiently awaiting international reinforcements, while the smoke from some 400 Canadian blazes reaches the United States, where 100 million Americans breathe poor air.
The event is “another worrying sign of how the climate crisis is affecting our lives,” White House spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre said on Wednesday.
After the Canadian provinces of Alberta (west) and Nova Scotia (east), it is Quebec’s turn to be hit by “never seen” fires: nearly 140 fires are currently active, including nearly a hundred deemed out of control, according to the Society for the Protection of Forests against Fire (Sopfeu). And no significant rain is expected until Monday evening.
“With the staff we currently have, we can cover about 40 fires at the same time,” said the Premier of the province, François Legault.
“We need to focus on where it’s most urgent,” he continued.
Quebec has deployed hundreds of people on the ground. With international aid, including the hundred firefighters from France who are due to arrive by Friday, the province hopes to increase its workforce to 1,200 people.
“Hundreds of American firefighters have just arrived in Canada and more are on their way,” Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced in the evening, after meeting with American President Joe Biden.
The latter “directed his team to deploy all federal firefighting means that can quickly help” fight the fires, the White House later reported.
“These fires are more frequent because of climate change,” said Justin Trudeau on Twitter.
The question of equipment and personnel will be crucial in the days to come, recognize the Canadian authorities.
This is hard felt in the northeastern United States.
In New York, the Statue of Liberty and the skyscrapers of Manhattan were enveloped in an orange and brown fog, while the masks, vestiges of the Covid, reappeared in the streets.
Visibility was so difficult that the United States Civil Aviation Agency (FAA) slowed air transport and even grounded some planes in the area.
The US government has also called on its fellow citizens whose health is fragile to “take precautions” in the face of deteriorating air quality.
More than 100 million of them were affected on Wednesday by air quality alerts because of smoke caused by fires in Canada, the Environmental Protection Agency told AFP ( EPA).
These alerts concern most of the northeastern United States, from Chicago in the north to Atlanta in the south. Air quality in this area “is primarily impacted by Canadian fires, although other local pollution emissions and weather may also play a role,” the EPA said.
More than 20,000 Canadians are currently being evacuated across the country, more than half of them to Quebec where the government is preparing to evacuate another 4,000.
Like 7,500 other residents, Nancy Desaulniers explained on Facebook that she was evacuated at 2 a.m. Wednesday morning from the town of Chibougamau, in the north of the province, with her companion and their two husky dogs.
“We decided to leave with the boat, which allowed us to bring important things to us”, confided the Quebecer, fearing to lose everything.
“It’s very stressful,” Daniel Harvey, a resident of Chapais, a neighboring town which is preparing to be evacuated, told La Presse newspaper. This father has prepared “all the kit to be released for each child: papers, hard drives, photos. We don’t know what will happen, so we have to act as if” everything could burn.
The French-speaking province has recorded 443 fires since the start of the year, compared to an average of 200 on the same date over the past ten years.
The situation is also considered exceptional by the authorities in terms of the number of hectares burned at this time of the year. Canada as a whole is experiencing an unprecedented year: around 2,300 forest fires have been recorded and around 3.8 million hectares have been burned, a total well above the average of recent decades.
Canada, which, due to its geographical location, is warming faster than the rest of the planet, has been confronted in recent years with extreme weather events whose intensity and frequency have been increased by climate change.
06/08/2023 05:44:18 – Montréal (AFP) – © 2023 AFP