Fires from 2023 reveal dangerous new reality
As skiers glide down the slopes of British Columbia’s Whistler Mountain and ice fishers drop their lines into frozen lakes in Alberta, dozens of the fires whose smoke darkened North America’s skies last year are still burning — with some smoldering beneath layers of snow.
These so-called “zombie fires” are a sign of a grim new normal that’s wreaking havoc even in far northern countries like Canada: a fire season that almost never ends.
The western province of B.C. had 90 zombie blazes still burning as of mid-march, holdovers from last year’s record fire season, while neighbouring Alberta started the year with 64 fires carried over from 2023 — more than 10 times the fiveyear average. As spring temperatures melt snow and uncover land parched by drought, those fires and new ones are poised to flare up, posing a fresh threat to Canada’s forests, not to mention the world’s atmosphere.
“We really don’t get out of wildfire season like we have historically,” said Rob de Pruis, director of consumer and industry relations at the Insurance Bureau of Canada. “They’re a real and present danger, and wildfires are happening right now.”
The worst fire season on record in Canada made global headlines last year when smoke from the blazes blotted out the skies above New York and other U.S. cities, spawned a rare pyro-tornado and forced the evacuations of an estimated 232,000 people. The fires burned an area that was more than seven times the historic average — or about four per cent of the country’s forests, according to a new study.
The flames caused more than $1 billion in insured damages, according to the insurance bureau. They also may have released emissions that are more than twice the annual carbon output of the nation’s economy, a top government scientist has estimated.
This year, with 71 per cent of Canada abnormally dry or in drought in February and swathes of the country as much as 5 degrees Celsius warmer than normal, governments and companies are bracing for a repeat.