(Montreal) While residents of southern Quebec are mopping up the remains of the deluge caused by the last breath of the hurricane Berylthe north of the province will enter a very high risk zone of forest fires from Friday.
“We are well aware that towards the South, there are flooding problems in certain sectors, but in certain regions, particularly the Côte-Nord, northern Quebec, the upper Saguenay–Lac-Saint-Jean, the north of La Tuque and Abitibi-Témiscamingue, our indices are really increasing significantly,” warns Stéphane Caron, prevention coordinator at the Société de protection des forêts contre le feu (SOPFEU).
The vastness of Quebec’s territory means that all extremes can indeed be found there at the same time. This Thursday, the risk of fire is generally low or moderate in what the SOPFEU designates as the intensive protection zone, where there are seven active fires.
In the northern zone, the situation is a little more difficult, with a very high or even extreme risk around James Bay, in particular. In this sector, 66 fires are active.
Steep increase in risk
But starting Friday and even more so Saturday, the dry weather forecast will increase these risks exponentially to reach high and very high levels in the regions mentioned above by Mr. Caron and even extreme in the Baie-Comeau sector. A significant enough increase, in fact, for the SOPFEU to issue a call for caution: “In a case like this, it is not only the fire danger that is high. These are really our severity indices in terms of the potential for fire spread or intensity. If there are fires in this context, they spread more easily.”
The good news in all this is that the summer of 2024 to date does not herald anything as catastrophic as last year, the year of all records in terms of forest fires, on the contrary, underlines Stéphane Caron: “There is no common measure at the moment on the side of the intensive protection zone, where we fight all the fires. We have a little more than a hundred fewer fires than the average of the last 10 years overall in the intensive protection zone. We really have a short season.”
In the northern zone, it’s a completely different story. “When we have a lot more fires than usual, we don’t fight them all; we only fight those that threaten strategic infrastructure or communities.”
Ban on open fires
Late Thursday, the Ministry of Natural Resources and Forestry issued a ban on open fires.
This ban will come into effect at 8 a.m. Friday and will apply to Northern Quebec, the Côte-Nord, northern Saguenay–Lac-Saint-Jean and Mauricie, as well as Abitibi-Témiscamingue.