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MONTREAL, KOMPAS.com – Forest fires in Canada have burned more than 10 million hectares (Ha) this year. So, Canadian government data shows this on Saturday (7/16/2023).

This is a record number for the area of ​​Canadian forest burned, which has already exceeded the most pessimistic predictions of scientists.

According to national figures from the Canadian Interagency Wildfire Center (CIFFC), the previous record was in 1989, when 7.3 million hectares burned in an entire year.

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The area burned this year, in just 6.5 months, is roughly the size of Portugal or Iceland.

A total of 4,088 fires have been recorded in Canada since January.

As a result of this incident, more than 150,000 people were displaced and a 19-year-old firefighter died on Thursday (7/13/2023).

“We are dealing with a very large area,” said Colonel Philippe Sansa, head of a French firefighting detachment deployed in fire-ravaged northern Quebec.

“The fire we are facing is 65 kilometers long, which represents a huge organizational challenge,” he told the AFP news agency.

Sansa says his team will be able to deploy more firefighters and helicopters from France to put out a fire 100 times smaller.

The majority of fires occur far from inhabited areas, but they still have serious consequences for the environment.

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“We find ourselves this year with figures worse than our most pessimistic scenario,” Yan Boulanger, a researcher at the Canadian Ministry of Natural Resources, told AFP.

“What’s really crazy is that there hasn’t been a respite since early May,” he says.

As of Saturday (July 15, 2023), there were 906 active hotspots in Canada, with 570 considered out of control.

This dire situation has changed across Canada in recent months.

In May, at the start of fire season, western Alberta took center stage with unprecedented fires.

A few weeks later, it was Nova Scotia, an Atlantic province with a mild climate, followed by Quebec. There, a huge fire kicked up a plume of smoke that even enveloped parts of the United States.

Since early July, the situation has changed dramatically in British Columbia, with more than 250 fires in just three days last week, most started by lightning.

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Large areas of Canada are experiencing severe drought, with months of below average precipitation and warm temperatures.

Scientists say Canada is warming faster than any other country in the world due to its geography and has been exposed to extreme weather events that are increasing in intensity and frequency due to climate change.

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