An evacuation order for more than 700 properties was issued for the Town of Osoyoos after an out-of-control wildfire crossed into British Columbia from Washington. The Eagle Bluff wildfire is seen burning from Anarchist Mountain, outside of Osoyoos, on July 29.Michelle Genberg/The Canadian Press
Remember the summer and fall of 2021? The people of British Columbia sure do.
That was the year when three disasters linked to climate change rolled over the province like a well-orchestrated military campaign.
First came the heat dome, a blister of extreme temperatures that settled over the Vancouver area and the Interior, as well as the Pacific Northwest in the United States. The B.C. village of Lytton set a national temperature record of 49.6 degrees Celsius on June 29, then burned to the ground the next day. In the end, more than 600 deaths were attributed to the brutal heat in one week, from June 25 to July 1, 2021.
The wildfires were next: 1,600 of them at their peak. They burned 8,700 square kilometres – 1½ times the area of Prince Edward Island – and killed at least two people. Thousands were forced out of their homes, and a curtain of smoke darkened the skies for weeks. The province declared an emergency.
Finally, in the fall, the rains came. An atmospheric river dropped torrents of water and caused widespread flooding and landslides. The major highways and railways from Vancouver to the rest of Canada were cut off. Hundreds of thousands of farm animals drowned in metre-deep water in the Abbotsford region; the entire population of Merritt, about 7,000 people, had to be evacuated. At least five people died. The province declared yet another emergency.
And now we’re learning that 2021 was just a prologue. The catastrophes that struck the province two years ago are happening across the country this summer. The climate crisis is metastasizing.
From B.C. to Nova Scotia, the country is living through the worst and most widespread wildfire season in its history. Federal data show that more than 12.1-million hectares of forest have burned to date this year. The previous high, for an entire year, was 7.4-million in 1989, according to the Canadian National Fire Database.
Alberta, B.C. and Quebec have been the hardest hit, but few provinces have been spared. The smoke and ash from the fires have blanketed Toronto and Montreal, at times briefly rocketing them to the top of the world’s list of cities with the worst air quality.
Four firefighters have been killed – in Quebec, B.C., Alberta and the Northwest Territories. In B.C., the July death of a nine-year-old boy who suffered from asthma has been linked to the smoke.
Then there is the bizarre mid-summer flooding seen most recently last week in Nova Scotia, where 25 centimetres of rain fell in 24 hours, and people, roads and homes were swept away. At least three people are dead, including two children, and the province has declared a state of emergency. Sudden heavy rains also caused damage and forced evacuations in Montreal and Quebec City in July.
And, finally, the heat. Northern Canada has suffered a record heat wave. Fort Good Hope, NWT, hit a record high of 37.4 C in early July, more than two degrees above the previous record. Environment Canada issued heat warnings for parts of Yukon and NWT on July 11. Northern Alberta and B.C. are suffering through record heat and drought.
The heat is a global phenomenon. July, 2023, is destined to go down as the hottest month ever recorded. At 16.95 C, it will surpass the previous high of 16.63 C in 2019 by almost a third of a degree. Texas and Arizona were trapped under a heat dome for weeks in July, and much of the southern U.S. is suffering through excessive heat. In Spain, Greece, Italy and China, high temperatures have forced governments to invoke emergency measures.
“The era of global warming has ended; the era of global boiling has arrived,” United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres said ominously last week.
Every summer in the Northern Hemisphere seems to bring a new reckoning with the consequences of climate heating. What will next summer, and the one after that, bring?
There are things Canada can and must do to begin mitigating the catastrophes that kill people, harm the economy, destroy property to the tune of billions of dollars and create ever-greater inequality. We will discuss those measures in our next editorial.
But the bottom line is that Canadians can no longer look away, hope for the best and rely on others to address the climate crisis. It’s here now, and getting worse.