The battle is large and never-ending. Since the first fires broke out in early May, Canada’s forests have continued to burn. On Wednesday, June 14, 447 fires were still active across the country, nine more than the previous day, according to the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Center. Of these, 218 are considered “out of control”. In all, 5.3 million hectares have already gone up in smoke, even though summer, the season for fires, has only just begun.
At the beginning of June, it was calmer, but on Friday, June 9, the fires in Alberta’s western part of the country flared up again, forcing the residents of Edson, a town of 8,400 inhabitants, to evacuate for the second time this year. “The fire is so out of control that some forestry crews have had to back off,” Luc Mercier, administrative director of Yellow head County, Edson’s area, described to AFP.
Quebec is heavily affected, with nearly 14,000 people still under evacuation orders. “It’s a first in Quebec’s history to fight so many fires, to evacuate so many people,” lamented Public Security Minister François Bonnardel, before expressing concern: “We’re going to have a fight that we think will last all summer.”
Canada is prone to wildfires, with hundreds of hectares of forest destroyed every year. In 2016, the province of Alberta already experienced a devastating mega-fire season with the Fort McMurray fire, which led to the destruction of 500,000 hectares in three months. By 2021, 9.3 million hectares had gone up in smoke across the country.
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