Tuesday, August 22, 2023

Milder weather brings relief from 'apocalyptic' Canada wildfires


The McDougall Creek wildfire burns in the hills of West Kelowna. Evacuation orders were put in place in the area of Kelowna, wit
The McDougall Creek wildfire burns in the hills of West Kelowna. Evacuation orders were put in place in the area of Kelowna, with a population of 150,000, as the fire threatened the city.

Cooling weather on Monday gave firefighters a slight edge against what the prime minister described as "apocalyptic" wildfires blazing across western Canada, after tens of thousands were evacuated or put on alert.

Two fires threatening large parts of the scenic Okanagan Valley, including the cities of Kelowna and neighboring West Kelowna in British Columbia, merged over the weekend.

Around 30,000 people in the province where 385 fires are now burning—out of almost 1,040 nationwide—had been under evacuation orders while another 36,000 were under alert to be ready to flee.

British Columbia's emergency management minister, Bowinn Ma, warned that the situation was "highly dynamic."

West Kelowna Fire Chief Jason Brolund, however, sounded a note of optimism, telling a news conference late Sunday: "We're finally feeling like we're moving forward, rather than we're moving backwards."

Temperatures in the major wine-producing region around Kelowna were expected to stay cool through Monday, creeping into the low 20 degrees Celsius (68 Fahrenheit) in the afternoon.

There was also some rain forecast starting Tuesday.

Officials said it was too soon to start planning a staged return of evacuees as thick smoke continued to choke the area.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau at a cabinet retreat in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, to discuss the national fire crisis said Canadians "are watching in horror the images of apocalyptic devastation."

Boats sit amongst smoke from the nearby Bush Creek East Wildfire on Shuswap Lake in Gleneden, British Columbia. Two fast-moving
Boats sit amongst smoke from the nearby Bush Creek East Wildfire on Shuswap Lake in Gleneden, British Columbia. Two fast-moving "extreme" wildfires merged overnight in western Canada, threatening hundreds more homes and forcing continued evacuations in a wide swath of British Columbia province.

"It's a scary and heartbreaking time," he said as "people flee for their lives and worry about their communities."

This summer in Canada, more than 14 million hectares (34.6 million acres) has already burned—roughly the size of Greece and almost twice the area of the last record of 7.3 million hectares. Four people have died so far.

Scientists say human-caused global warming is exacerbating natural hazards, making them both more frequent and more deadly.

'Horrible to breathe'

Kelowna, a city of 150,000, has become the latest population center hit.

"It has been horrible to spend the week with this air. It is horrible to breathe," Mary Hicks, a 29-year-old IT worker who had been visiting the region from Montreal, told AFP on Sunday. "I really want to go home."

But she was stuck for now, with her return flight canceled. The airport hopes to resume flights this week, depending on visibility.

"When I had to pack, in the moment I was crying, crying, crying," said April, 39, who with her two small children fled her home east of Kelowna and was staying in a hotel outside the city.

On the other side of Okanagan Lake, a number of homes on the outskirts of West Kelowna had been burned.

Charred remains are seen on the side of the road on the highway in Enterprise. The tiny hamlet, a key junction on the road south
Charred remains are seen on the side of the road on the highway in Enterprise. The tiny hamlet, a key junction on the road south from Yellowknife in the Northwest Territories, has been almost completely destroyed by fires.

"My sister's boyfriend's house has burnt down. He lives in the West Kelowna side and it was so windy that the fire was spreading and they couldn't control it," said Bogi Bagosi, a 16-year-old student.

"It's kind of heartbreaking to watch the city burn down. They are doing their best to stop it but it is not enough."

The confusion and terror of the fires and evacuations have been compounded by Meta's blocking of Canadian news on Facebook and Instagram, in response to a new law requiring digital giants to pay publishers for articles.

"It is inconceivable that a company like Facebook is choosing to put corporate profits ahead of (safety)... and keeping Canadians informed about things like wildfires," Trudeau said Monday.

Cooler with rain 'a bit of help'

In Canada's far north, crews held back a massive fire threatening Yellowknife, the capital of the Northwest Territories. They were helped by some rain over the weekend.

Yellowknife—now a ghost town, except for  who stayed behind to build fire barriers and lay out sprinklers—and many small communities in the near-Arctic region have been evacuated, leaving two thirds of the population of the Northwest Territories displaced.

"With a little bit of help from the weather over the past few days and a lot of good firefighting work we've been able to keep this thing at bay for the time being," local  information officer Mike Westwick told a briefing.

© 2023 AFP

Canada wildfires spread and merge as evacuations continue




Yellowknife and Kelowna wildfires burn in what is already Canada's worst season on record


wildfire
Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain

The devastating wildfire that destroyed the historic Maui town of Lahaina in Hawaii was still making headlines when the Northwest Territories issued an evacuation order for Yellowknife and British Columbia declared a provincewide state of emergency.

All 22,000 residents of Yellowknife are being evacuated in advance of a wall of flame from out-of-control wildfires converging on the capital city. Yet this isn't the first time an entire Canadian town has been cleared.

In May 2016, all 90,000 residents of Fort McMurray, Alta., were evacuated shortly before wildfires engulfed 2,400 homes and businesses with a total cost of more than $4 billion.

In 2017 in British Columbia, the  season led to the evacuation of more than 65,000 residents across numerous communities, costing $130 million in insured damages and $568 million in firefighting costs.

Let's not forget the June 2021 heat dome resulting in temperature records being broken across British Columbia three days in a row. The  culminated in Lytton, a village in the southern part of the province, recording 49.6°C on June 29, the hottest temperature ever observed anywhere in Canada and breaking the previous record by five degrees. The next day, wildfires engulfed Lytton, destroying more than 90% of the town.

Long, hot summer

The summer of 2023 is one for the . June and July were the warmest months ever recorded, and extreme temperature records were broken around the world.

By mid-July, Canada had already recorded the worst forest fire season on record. And British Columbia broke its previous 2018 record for worst recorded forest fire season. With several weeks to go in the 2023 forest fire season, more than six times the 10-year average area has already been consumed by wildfires.

And yet, this pales in comparison to what we can expect in the years ahead from ongoing global warming arising from  released through the combustion of fossil fuels.

Predicted outcomes

This year's fire season record will be broken in the near future as warming continues. And once again, it's not as if what's happening is a surprise.

Almost 20 years ago, my colleagues and I showed that there already was a detectable human influence on the observed increasing area burned from Canadian wildfires. We wrote:

"The area burned by forest fires in Canada has increased over the past four decades, at the same time as summer season temperatures have warmed. Here we use output from a coupled climate model to demonstrate that human emissions of greenhouse gases and sulfate aerosol have made a detectable contribution to this warming. We further show that human-induced climate change has had a detectable influence on the area burned by forest fire in Canada over recent decades."

It appears little has been done to prepare rural Canada for what's in store as governments deal with immediate, rather than transformational approaches to wildfire management.

This, despite the existence of the national FireSmart program designed to assist homeowners, neighborhoods and communities decrease their vulnerability to wildfires and increase their resilience to their negative impacts.

Forest management practices including forest fire preventionmonoculture reforestation and the use of glyphosate to actively kill off broadleaf plant species, will all have to be reassessed from a science- and risk-based perspective.

Growing number of court cases

Pressure is certainly mounting on  to become more proactive in both mitigating and preparing for the impacts of climate change.

An Aug. 14 pivotal ruling from the Montana First Judicial District Court sided with a group of youth who claimed that the State of Montana violated their right to a healthy environment.

A similar case brought by seven youth against the Ontario government after the province reduced its greenhouse gas reduction targets has also been heralded as groundbreaking.

As the number of such court cases grow, governments and corporations will need to do more to both protect their citizens from the impacts of climate change, and to aggressively decarbonize energy systems.

I wouldn't be surprised if the Alberta government is next to be taken to court by youth after Premier Danielle Smith's outrageous economic and environmental decision to put a moratorium on renewable energy projects.

States of emergency

While attention is currently turned to the evacuation of Yellowknife, it's sobering to remind ourselves that they are not alone. The village of Lytton, burnt to the ground just two years ago, has been put on evacuation alert as wildfires approach.

Kelowna has just declared a state of emergency as the McDougall Creek fire starts consuming homes in the region. And this, coming on the heels of the 20th anniversary of the Okanagan Mountain Park fire, when more than 27,000 people had to be evacuated and 239 Kelowna homes were lost.

Canadians will take solace as summer turns into winter and the immediacy of our 2023 wildfire situation wanes. Unfortunately, it will be Australia's turn next to experience the burning wrath of nature in response to human-caused global warming and the 2023 El NiƱo.

Rather than waiting to respond reactively to the next fire season, proactive preparation is the appropriate way forward. For as the old adage states: an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.The Conversation

Military joins wildfire fight in Canada's far north

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