Marathon wildfire season could persist into next month, Ottawa says

Open this photo in gallery:

Ottawa is forecasting the brutal wildfire season to continue across much of Canada this month and into next, with southern B.C., the Prairies, Northwest Territories and western Ontario at great risk of seeing their seasons extend into September.

At a federal briefing Friday, officials detailed a string of national metrics to describe how uniquely devastating this year has been so far: 5,595 wildfires have burned an estimated 13.4 million hectares, dwarfing the 10-year average of two million hectares.

As well, the national-preparedness level has been at its highest rating for 90 straight days – breaking the 2021 record of 50 days. The equivalent of more than one billion tonnes of carbon dioxide has been released by the blazes and the number of evacuees, 167,589, is almost as high as the population of Oshawa, Ont.

“This summer has turned into a challenging marathon,” said Michael Norton, a director general at Natural Resources Canada. “Unfortunately, bottom line: Fire season is not over.”

This year, Canada has already deployed 5,821 domestic firefighters and 4,990 international firefighters from 12 countries to battle wildfires across the country, according to Mr. Norton. Most of the international staff still fighting fires are doing so in B.C., tackling some of the nearly 400 active blazes. They include contractors from the U.S., Australia, Mexico, Brazil, Costa Rica and Ontario, on top of thousands of BC Wildfire Service staff.

What’s the difference between an evacuation alert and an evacuation order in Canada?

However, Mr. Norton said that as the Southern Hemisphere heats up, some of these international crews will need to return back to their home countries soon to prepare for wildfire seasons there, which he characterized as the annual pattern.

“Conversations are ongoing with countries that have indicated an ability to support us,” he said about solving the potential shortage of firefighters.

Mike Flannigan, a professor at Thompson Rivers University in Kamloops who has been studying the interaction of fire with weather and climate for more than 35 years, said Ottawa should explore creating its own national pool of seasonal firefighters and a squadron of water bombers to jump into action when interprovincial crews are unavailable or too exhausted to help and foreign fighters have returned home.

“We’re tapping new resources, but there’s limited resources,” said Dr. Flannigan, adding that fire activity is picking up in the western United States, Italy, Greece, Algeria, Spain and Portugal. “If this trend continues, as I expect it will with climate change, we will be resource limited.”

Much of British Columbia is forecast to experience hotter-than-usual temperatures next week that could exacerbate already precarious drought and wildfire conditions. With a national squad, he argued, reinforcements could arrive now to stamp out troubling starts before they spread into out-of-control blazes. Being able to deploy a pro-active national team, he added, could have saved Alberta from some of its most devastating fires this spring.

With climate change exacerbating the damage, Dr. Flannigan said Canada is already spending money during many wildfire seasons by sending in its military to help suppress fires and by evacuating people, so it may as well help more with prevention, which he estimated could be done with 20 so-called 20-packs – the standardized grouping when firefighters are sent abroad.

Asked Friday about a national-wildfire-fighting force, Mr. Norton said there is no specific discussion in Ottawa about that policy option, adding that fighting wildfires has traditionally been a provincial responsibility. But, he said, the federal government is funding the training of 1,000 new staff to combat attrition in the provincial corps.

At a North Vancouver District firehall on Friday, Natural Resources Minister Jonathan Wilkinson and Emergency Preparedness Minister Harjit Sajjan announced that 25 municipal firefighters from B.C. and Alberta had recently finished a course in Kamloops on fighting wildfires. These new graduates of a course run by the International Association of Firefighters (IAFF), will now go out and train at least 275 of their colleagues in the nuances of fighting fires on the edges of their communities.

The IAFF, which represents more than 339,000 professional firefighters and paramedics in the U.S. and Canada, first began developing this course about a decade ago in the southwestern states, according to Mike Carter, a Calgary firefighter who is the spokesperson for the group’s Western Canada region.

The IAFF first approached Ottawa about training municipal firefighters in 2019, he said, and secured $400,000 in federal funding a year ago for this first phase.

Mr. Sajjan said roughly 10 per cent of Canadians live in areas adjacent to wild land that could go up in flames, with Osoyoos, B.C., narrowly being saved from a massive blaze at the end of July illustrating that risk.

With a report from The Canadian Press