By Nivedita Balu
TORONTO, July 24 (Reuters) – New wildfires broke out in Western Canada and forests continued to burn in Ontario as Canada battled what Prime Minister Mark Carney called one of the most intense wildfire seasons on record.
Nearly 34,000 lightning strikes over the past week led to a series of fires and evacuation orders in the southern part of British Columbia. As of Friday morning, there were 25 evacuation orders and 90 active wildfires in the province, which warned that warming and drying conditions could lead to growth of existing wildfires.
“The weather forecast is far from favorable. There is no significant help from Mother Nature whatsoever in the foreseeable future,” said Incident Commander Hugh Murdoch of a cluster of fires near Kimberley, B.C., 520 km (323 miles) from Vancouver.
Wildfires fueled by intense heat and lightning attributed to warmer temperatures have burned remote forests across Canada this summer. Last week, smoke drifted to major U.S. East Coast and Midwestern cities.
FIRES BLAZE ACROSS ONTARIO
In Ontario, there were 139 active wildfires in the Northwest region, of which 32 were not under control.
Environment Canada issued a warning for poor air quality in Banff, Alberta, and surrounding areas on Friday but said conditions were expected to improve for most areas this weekend.
Carney said in a statement the federal government would mobilize more than 5,300 firefighters and about 300 water bombers, helicopters and evacuation aircraft to battle the fires as extreme heat waves and record-breaking dry conditions are creating one of Canada’s most intense wildfire seasons. Mexico will also send up to 200 of its firefighters to combat wildfires in the coming weeks, he said.
Thousands of people, including some First Nations communities, have been evacuated this summer. About 2.95 million hectares (7.29 million acres) of land have been scorched this year, surpassing the 10-year average of roughly 2.55 million hectares. Canada has more active wildfires than it did at the same time in either of the past two years.
Canada’s forested areas account for 28% of the world’s boreal forests.
Improving weather in the east has helped Quebec tame some blazes, along with assistance from firefighters from neighboring provinces, France and the United States.
“The situation in Quebec is under control. We have good weather to help us,” said Stéphane Caron at Quebec’s forest fire prevention agency SOPFEU. “We have to make sure that there’s no hotspot on the ground anymore because if there’s hot weather and no rain, the fire can be back.”
(Reporting by Nivedita Balu in Toronto; Editing by Caroline Stauffer and Rod Nickel)
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