![]() ![]() “These fires are so big that you really can’t put people anywhere near them, the winds kick up, they move very fast, they can start out ahead of you and they can trap crews,” Gray said. Some of the fires are being allowed to burn simply because they are too treacherous for firefighters to even attempt to tackle. Of the 522 fires currently burning, 262 are listed as out of control across Canada, including British Columbia, Alberta, Ontario and Quebec.Īlong with remoteness and distance from people, terrain is another factor. You’re talking about huge areas where there’s no road access, no communities in some cases.” “The smoke is a problem but even if we wanted to do something about it, it wouldn’t really be clear how to do so. It’s expensive to do so, ecologically undesirable, and kind of just messing with nature,” said Daniel Perrakis, a fire scientist with the Canadian Forest Service. “There’s always been fires Canadian fire managers don’t fight. While the thought of massive fires burning through millions of hectares of forestland might sound unfathomable, it isn’t entirely new. People urged to stay indoors as smoke from Canadian wildfires continues to create unhealthy air quality from the Midwest to the Northeast Haze obscures buildings along the Lake Michigan shoreline in Chicago Wednesday, June 28, 2023. He added, “If you’ve got these fires that are burning way out in the back forty, and they’re not threatening anything immediately, then you’re going to have to let them do their thing.” “You protect people, infrastructure, watersheds, so there’s a prioritization system.” “If you have limited resources, and you have a lot of fires, what you do is you protect human life and property first,” Robert Gray, a Canadian wildland fire ecologist, told CNN. Massive fires burning in remote areas – like some of those currently burning in northwestern Quebec – are often too out of control to do anything about. While every Canadian province responds to the fires in their regions differently, they all have common guidelines emphasizing the importance of prioritizing which fires to fight and which to leave alone. Some of the fires are in extremely remote areas Scientists continue to reiterate warnings the effects of climate change have arrived, emphasizing wildfires and the plumes of toxic smoke generated by them will become more frequent.Īs plumes of smoke billow out of Canada’s forests, some may be wondering why many of the fires are being allowed to burn unchecked. ![]() Meanwhile, at least 10 countries have deployed their own firefighters to assist Canada with putting out the ones threatening communities whose residents have scrambled to evacuate. Some fires are so out of control officials have no choice but to leave them burning. ![]() More than 100 million people are under air quality alerts from Wisconsin to Vermont and down to North Carolina as smoke from Canadian wildfires continues to waft south, though conditions are expected to improve slowly into the holiday weekend.Īir quality on both sides of the border has been affected as more than 500 active wildfires raging across Canada. Another wave of wildfire smoke has drifted into the US, dimming blue summer skies and igniting troubling concerns regarding the increasing frequency of fires, and what they have to do with climate change. ![]()
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