An area of forest destroyed by a forest fire in a picture taken on May 10, 2023 near Entrance in western Canada’s Alberta province. (Megan Albu)
From east to west, Canada is being hit by an unprecedented wildfire season, and it hasn’t even peaked, usually in July or August.
No province is spared, not even Quebec or Nova Scotia to the east, where major fires are not usually seen.
Here’s a brief account of what Secretary of State for Emergency Preparedness Bill Blair said Tuesday about “Canada’s worst bushfire season on record” by the numbers.
– Nearly 500 active fires –
A total of 490 wildfires were burning Tuesday, more than half of which were said to be out of control. They began in western Canada in early May and triggered a state of emergency and the evacuation of tens of thousands of people in Alberta.
A few weeks later, after rains brought some relief to western Canada, firefighting efforts shifted to Nova Scotia on the Atlantic coast and Quebec, unfamiliar with the scale and strength of this year’s fires.
Quebec remains the country’s hottest spot, with 112 active fires whose smoke is reaching the United States and Europe.
In total, more than 100,000 people have been displaced by the fires across the country.
– 7.8 million hectares burned –
In a typical year, about 7,500 wildfires in Canada burn more than 2.5 million hectares of forest. But this year it was more than 7.8 million hectares, an area almost the size of Austria.
In Quebec, 1.3 million hectares have burned so far, compared to an average of less than 10,000 a year over the past decade. The area burned in the last 25 days exceeds the total for the last 20 years.
– High CO2 emissions –
According to Europe’s Copernicus Observatory, carbon emissions released into the atmosphere by fires are already exceeding Canada’s annual record.
Since early May, the fires have generated nearly 600 million tons of CO2, equivalent to 88% of the country’s total greenhouse gas emissions from all energy sources in 2021.
In 2023 alone, fires in Canada are responsible for more than 10% of global carbon emissions from wildfires in 2022 (1,455 megatons).
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