Quebec fires weakened by rain as blazes in western Canada force many to flee
Overdue rains and cooler temperatures have given Quebec fire crews a chance to launch their assault on dozens of wildfires, but the reprieve for one part of Canada comes as fires in the west of the country have once again forced residents to flee their homes.
The country has been struggling with an “unprecedented” wildfire season, with nearly 450 forest fires across the country on Sunday, 220 of which were burning out of control, according to the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre.
In Quebec, crews are hoping to attack dozens of blazes that have been temporarily weakened by favourable weather.
“We went from a reactive mode to an offensive mode,” Quebec’s forestry minister, Maïté Blanchette Vézina, said in a weekend news conference.
But more than 14,000 residents remain under evacuation as the mix of domestic and foreign firefighters and Canadian armed forces members tackle the blazes.
The 117 wildfires across Quebec underscore the record-breaking nature of the spring fire season that has displaced tens of thousands and choked the air of more than 100 million people in eastern North America. Quebec wildfires have already scorched 740,000 hectares of boreal forest, more than 300 times the average during the spring season over the past decade.
In the coming days, nearly 350 firefighters from the EU will join nearly 1,000 personnel already on the frontlines. Nearly 100 firefighters from Spain and 140 from Portugal will arrive in Quebec City on Wednesday.
“There is this solidarity,” Claire Kowalewski, the European Union Emergency Response Coordination Centre’s liaison officer, told the Canadian Press. “Today, unfortunately, it’s Canada that is facing these terrible fires. But last year in Spain, it was also a terrible year.”
Despite progress in Quebec, officials in western Canada have watched as new blazes crop up and move dangerously close to populated areas.
The Alberta town of Edson was evacuated on Friday for the second time this year after a nearby fire crossed fireguards and moved perilously close to the community.
“We’re in a little bit of a lull right now but we do expect things to progress if the temperatures come up and the winds come up, so we’re not out of the woods yet,” Edson’s mayor, Wade Williams, said in an update on Sunday, telling residents they could not yet return to their homes.
Neighbouring British Columbia is also dealing with new fires that have pushed residents from their homes. In the north-eastern pocket of the province, officials warned of “immediate danger to life safety” and ordered evacuations of the Peace River regional district and the district of Tumbler Ridge.
Officials issued new evacuation orders linked to the Donnie Creek fire, which has grown to more than 350,000 hectares in size and broached containment lines constructed by fire crews.
On Vancouver Island, a region of the province that typically sees high levels of spring rainfall, a wildfire has severed access to Tofino, a popular beachfront community. The main highway that serves the communities has been closed down for more than a week. The province has created a temporary detour, but the journey adds four hours of travel and traverses forestry service roads.
About 4.8 million hectares have burned this year across Canada, the most active start to a wildfire season on record.