The weather of the past few hours brought hope Monday to firefighters in Western Canada who are battling extreme fires that threaten several cities and have forced thousands of residents to evacuate.
“It’s a frightening and overwhelming time,” admitted Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, speaking of “horror scenes”.
“From coast to coast, Canadians watch in horror as the scenes of apocalyptic devastation and fires unfold,” he added hours before a crisis meeting to discuss the fire issue.
All eyes are on the westernmost province, British Columbia, in a state of emergency and which concentrates more than 380 forest fires, including 14 megafires and 157 uncontrolled, according to local authorities.
But West Kelowna Fire Chief Jason Brolund said Monday he was “optimistic” about the progress made by his team and the weather forecast for the next few days.
“We had a good day yesterday and a great evening,” he told a press conference, adding that “no infrastructure has burned down in the last 24 hours.”
Temperatures are indeed cooler on Monday and rain is expected from Tuesday.
However, “the fires in the region remain uncontrolled” and “the smoke will be persistent”, warned the local authorities.
“The past few days have been the most difficult in British Columbia’s history in terms of firefighting,” said the province’s Forestry Minister Bruce Ralston, adding that the fire season was “still far from over”.
“We don’t want to go outside because there’s too much smoke. It’s foggy, it smells like barbecue, it looks like a sandstorm,” Thaïs Poujade, a 15-year-old high school student from Lyon, on a school exchange in Kelowna.
This city of 150,000 inhabitants, located 400 kilometers from Vancouver, where thousands of people had to evacuate, has been drowned for several days in thick, fragrant and visible smoke more than a hundred kilometers from the city.
“It’s heartbreaking to see the city burning. They’re doing their best to stop it, but it’s not enough. Most of my friends have already evacuated,” said 16-year-old high school student Bogi Bagosi.
About 27,000 people in the province have had to evacuate while another 35,000 are on high alert and could be forced to flee at any time.
In Canada’s Far North, firefighting crews are also still hard at work containing a massive blaze threatening the capital of the Northwest Territories.
Two-thirds of the territory’s population remains displaced, including residents of Yellowknife, now a ghost town, except for emergency personnel who remained behind.
“It is highly unlikely that the fire will reach Yellowknife in the next three days as the fire has been put out on one of the fronts with air support and rain,” local fire department officer Mike Westwick said on Monday. forest fires.
Canada has been confronted in recent years with extreme weather events, the intensity and frequency of which have been increased by climate change.
The country is experiencing a record-breaking forest fire season this year: 14 million hectares – about the size of Greece – have burned, double the last record dating from 1989.
The season started in Alberta which, in May, had to declare a state of emergency due to an unprecedented situation. Nova Scotia and 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.
21/08/2023 22:27:54 – Kelowna (Canada) (AFP) © 2023 AFP
