248 bushfires out of control – the key points about the situation in Canada Greta Thunberg has finished school

Where’s the fire?

Almost all provinces in Canada are currently affected by wildfires. The first fires started in late April (before the “wildfire season” in May) in the west and quickly spread east. Of the 430 fires currently burning, about 160 are in the French-speaking province of Quebec.

The fact that the fires are spreading from coast to coast this year is unusual, Canada’s Department of Natural Resources Michael Norton told “abc”: “At this time of year, fires only occur on one side of the country, almost always in the west.”

So far, the fires have devastated an area of ​​about 38,000 square kilometers, Emergency Relief Minister Bill Blair said at a news conference Wednesday night — an area the size of Switzerland without Ticino.

Why did the fires start?

The main causes of wildfires are human activities and lightning strikes. Human actions don’t necessarily mean someone is deliberately starting a fire – it’s almost always negligence that leads to the disaster. A discarded cigarette or a carelessly extinguished campfire can quickly cause a fire in a dry environment.

Dry, warm weather also favors lightning strikes, which ignite half of all fires in a normal wildfire season. However, such fires are responsible for 85 percent of the destruction.

And indeed, the weather in Canada this year has been particularly dry and hot. There had been unusually little snow in the winter. The Atlantic side in particular has been hit by drought since February. The provinces of Alberta, Nova Scotia and Quebec experienced record high temperatures this year. In some parts of Alberta, the average temperature in May was more than 12 degrees Celsius higher than in May.

However, there are also voices accusing the state of being partly responsible for the fires: Prime Minister Trudeau’s government has failed to take preventive measures. The Daily Mail reports that Indigenous people in Canada have sometimes been prevented from performing their ritual (controlled) burning. In such fires, the forest is cleaned of combustible material in a controlled manner, which then no longer ignites in an uncontrolled fire.

Is there an end to the fires in sight?

Not yet. Of the approximately 430 fires, 248 are out of control, reports the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Center (CIFFC). In heavily ravaged Quebec, firefighters are battling 92 fires to control the natural disaster.

In addition to the regular fire service, which is on continuous duty, the government has sent several hundred members of the Canadian military to the affected provinces. These helped fight the fire; They also assist with evacuations and local authorities with logistical challenges, Defense Secretary Anita Anand explained in the Washington Post.

In addition, nearly 1,000 firefighters from the United States, South Africa and other countries have traveled to support their local counterparts.

The regular bushfire season lasts until October.

Why is New York affected?

Winds have carried smoke from Quebec fires south this week. This has been collected and covered by the city of New York. In the meantime, however, most have already moved and dispersed.

In New York, air quality has fallen to “moderate” – it was still “harmful” on Wednesday.

Incidentally, don’t be fooled: New York is of course not the only city that has or has suffered from air pollution. Canadian cities in particular were sometimes very badly hit – such as Montreal and Ottawa, which are caught in the fire, and New York.

Will the smoke also blow to Europe?

Yes, but certainly not to the extent known from the New York photographs. For example, the Institute of Environmental Sciences (NILU) in Norway used its measuring equipment to determine an increase in pollutants in the air and was then able to determine the place of origin.

Nikolaos Evangeliou of NILU told CNN that the Norwegians may notice a faint smell of smoke in the sky or even see thin clouds in the sky. But there are no health risks: “Smoke that travels such distances arrives here very diluted.”

In the coming days, the plumes are expected to continue and spread across Europe. In this country, however, these will hardly be noticed.

Will such wildfires become more common in the future?

Experts believe that climate change has and will continue to have an impact on Canada’s wildfires. Edward Struzik, a fellow at the Queen’s Institute for Energy and Environmental Policy, explains in CBSNews:

The melting of the poles is also contributing to the fires: the jet stream, a powerful wind that sweeps across Canada, is losing strength because it depends on the temperature difference between the North Pole and the South. Due to the weak jet stream, dry high-pressure areas can increasingly form. That then leads to drought and drought, says Struzik.