2023-07-14 18:09:25
Quebec and French firefighters, in the Abitibi-Témiscamingue region, in Quebec, on July 8, 2023. CARLO ZAGLIA / AFP
In Quebec, the taiga is burning continuously over 1.5 million hectares. The record fire crackles 1,300 kilometers north of Montreal, devouring dry moss under a cloudless but smoke-filled sky. This fire is a significant part of the 9.9 million hectares of woods and grassland already reduced to ashes in Canada. Since the beginning of the year, the flames have eaten up an area equivalent to that of Portugal. Thursday, July 13, a firefighter died during an intervention in the west of the country.
This fire season, “the worst ever recorded”, according to the Canadian government, is only halfway through. THE Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Center (CIFFC)which coordinates the action of firefighters at the national level, notes that, out of 3,989 fires identified since January, 901 are still active. “So far this is less than in 1989, a landmark year when there were 12,204 fires, comments Marieke de Roos, communications officer at CIFFC. But the fires of 2023 are burning larger spaces. » Reported over the past four decades, this trend is confirmed across the country by a study du Centre: the number of forest fires is decreasing, but their intensity is increasing.
The Great Plains of Alberta in the midwest of the country are used to fires, but the flames have already affected eight times more hectares there than the five-year average. And if the rains of June showered the bulk of the fires after a particularly abrasive month of May, the firefighters remain on the alert. “We have several weeks of high heat to go through and the North West is already warming up”, warns Josée St-Onge, spokesperson for the Alberta agency for the fight against forest fires. The same is true for the Yukon, a Canadian region neighboring Alaska, relatively spared by the embers so far.
Quebec has flared up more than usual and 1,044 firefighters are fighting fires closer than ever to municipalities. The proliferation of homes encourages them to concentrate their efforts on the most spectacular blazes: on the side of Alberta, some 2,100 firefighters water only five fires. Even if it means leaving tens of kilometers of forest to ignite further north. “The priority is to put out fires near communities and industries”, supports Ms. St-Onge. The strategy of the firefighters, which we call « sustained action » (“sustained action”, in French), has become the federal standard: it is no longer a question of stopping the fires, but of containing them as much as possible.
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