Even during July and August, more wildfires than normal can be expected in Canada due to the drought and heat, says the director of the CFS Northern Research Center of the Canadian Forestry Agency.
Canada’s wildfires have broken records this year for the size of the area burned, the number of people evacuated and the costs caused by firefighting efforts, Canadian officials said Thursday local time.
However, the wildfire season is only halfway through.
– It is no exaggeration to say that the wildfire season of 2023 has broken and will continue to break records in many different ways, says the director of the CFS Northern Research Center of the Canadian Forest Service Michael Norton.
According to Norton, the warm and dry weather conditions across Canada suggest that between July and August, wildfires may be seen on a larger scale than normal.
“Drought is a significant contributing factor that affects all provinces and territories,” he said.
According to Norton, higher than normal temperatures have also been predicted for much of the country.
An area about the size of the province of Lapland burned
As of Wednesday of this week, there are reported to be nearly 650 active wildfires in Canada, of which approximately 350 are out of control. During this year, there have been a total of more than 3,400 wildfires, which easily exceeds the ten-year average of about 2,750 per year.
About 88,000 square kilometers of land have burned this year, which is a slightly smaller area than the land area of the entire province of Lapland. Compared to the ten-year average, more than ten times the amount of terrain has burned this year.
– The final size of the area burned during this wildfire season may be significantly larger than it is now, Norton said.
This year, an estimated slightly more than 150,000 people have been evacuated from wildfires. There are currently around 4,500 people evacuated.
There are currently about 3,800 Canadian and about 3,300 foreign rescuers fighting wildfires in Canada.
Norton estimates that the annual costs of extinguishing wildfires are already approaching about one billion Canadian dollars, or about 700 million euros.
Source: AP