Canada Battles Worst Wildfire Season on Record, With Smoke Reaching New York and Washington D.C.

It is common for there to be fires at this time, but this season they are being more virulent. “Within three days, everything went wrong,” said Phiplippe Bergeron of the Quebec firefighting agency.

Almost four million hectares of land have burned so far in the country, 12 times above the average of the last 10 years for this time of year.

“That is the equivalent of almost 10 million football fields”Canada’s emergency preparedness minister Bill Blair told the BBC’s Newshour program on Wednesday.

And with so much fire, local extinction resources have been exhausted. For this reason, firefighters from France and the United States have had to be used to help with the extinction work.

In the case of Quebec, the fires have decreased this week from 150 to just over 130. But the problem, Bergeron explained, is that they are merging with each other and getting bigger.

Quebec has never seen wildfires of this scale, which occur more typically in parts of western Canada, such as Alberta and British Columbia.

In all the country, more than 20,000 people have had to be evacuated from their homes, 15,000 of them in Quebec.

The situation continues to be worrying in several regions, explained Stephane Caron, from the Society for the Protection of Forests against Fire, SOPFEU in its French acronym.

“We are only at the beginning of this fire season. We are now entering the period where you usually start to see bigger fires in Quebec,” he said.

He risk of a new outbreak is described as “extreme” by the authorities in the western part of this province.

The unusually active season has sparked some calls among politicians for the creation of a national fire service. Canada generally relies on each province sharing resources or aid from neighboring US states.

When those resources are depleted, provinces turn to the federal government for military support, as well as to other countries for international assistance, said Brian Wiens, managing director of Canada Wildfire, an organization that researches wildfire management in partnership with provincial agencies. fire extinguishing. .

With so many fires burning at once this year, provinces fighting their own fires are now too tense to share resources.

On Wednesday, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau acknowledged that his government is considering creating some kind of national disaster response agency.

little more than 800 kilometers separate Quebec, in Canada, from New York, in United States. But the effects of the fires are being felt in the skies of the Big Apple.

An orange haze covered the city skyline, obscuring landmarks like the Statue of Liberty.

Public health officials have warned people that do not exercise outdoors and minimize your exposure to smoke as much as possiblesince the air presents immediate and long-term health risks.

Experts say that exposure to secondhand smoke can cause a number of health problems, including an elevated pulse, chest pain, and swelling in the eyes, nose, and throat.

“We are seeing a increased number of asthma-related visits in emergencies,” a spokesperson for the New York health department told AFP.

In both train stations, buses and parks, health officials they have distributed masks and public schools have been asked to switch to remote teaching mode, at least for now.

Linda Juliano, a 65-year-old secretary, gladly accepted one of these masks. “I’ve never seen anything like it. It reminded me a lot of 9/11, seeing the sky full of smoke and everything,” she told AFP, describing the sepia smog as “terrifying.”

the smoke too affects the city of Washington DC. For example, in the Union Market area, a place that is often packed with people eating outdoors in the afternoon sun, this week the chairs were empty.

In the area is Tori, who has just removed a mask and has it tied to her wrist. She just made a trip from another part of the country to Washington DC and she told the BBC that she noticed the change in the air.

“While I was driving, I noticed that it was more cloudy, and I also feel a little different. I had head ache. It’s very scary, if you think about it,” she recounted.

Not surprisingly, the city reached the “Brown Code”, the highest category of the air quality index (AQIan Engand), indicating dangerous health conditions. The index even surpassed the most polluted cities in the world.

About 111 million people in the United States are under alert for air quality due to the firesThe US Environmental Protection Agency said Thursday.

The White House postponed an outdoor Pride event, though a parade and festival scheduled for the weekend were still ongoing. In turn, the National Zoo announced that it would close “for the safety of our animals, our staff, and our guests.”

The smoke also affected flights. The Federal Aviation Administration took steps to “safely manage the flow of traffic to New York City, Washington DC, Philadelphia, and Charlotte.”

“Millions of Americans are experiencing the effects of smoke resulting from the devastating wildfires burning across Canada, another stark reminder of the impacts of climate change,” Biden said in a statement.

“If you want to know what climate change will be like, this particular month is pretty typical of what you can expect.“Brian Wiens said about it.

Environmental groups have also been quick to draw attention to climate change, which is creating hotter and drier conditions that increase the risk and spread of wildfires.

And although it is part of North America that is being directly affected by them, the traces of forest fires in Canada extend further: this week smoke was detected thousands of miles away, in Norwayas warned this Friday by the NILU Institute for Climate and Environmental Research of the Scandinavian country.

*Reporting by Nadine Yusif from Toronto and Bernd Debusmann Jr, Chelsea Bailey and Juan Benn in the United States.

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