Since the beginning of May, Canada has been burning. The ravages of forest fires forced the evacuation of thousands of citizens, they decimated entire towns and villages, devouring hundreds of square kilometers of surface area in the space of a few days. The roads are blocked, populations finding themselves cut off from everything; major infrastructure goes up in smoke, air quality suffers. The forests are disappearing.
From coast to coast, Canada is burning. At the beginning of June, nearly 3 million hectares had already been consumed by 2023, while the Canadian average for the month of May, over 10 years, is 150,000 hectares. “These conditions, at this point in the season, are absolutely unprecedented,” Emergency Preparedness Minister Bill Blair said last week. From British Columbia to Halifax, the pangs of global warming are being felt very concretely.
No matter how much we want to deny this reality, as some cranks still stubbornly do in their conspiratorial vision, extreme weather phenomena are here for good. Floods, forest fires, heat waves, torrential rains are no longer the result of terrible misfortune. As our journalist Alexis Riopel recently reported, “the burning association between El Niño and global warming will drag the world towards new temperature records” over the next year, with all the climatic dramas that will ensue.
Quebec is no exception. On Monday, some 161 forest fires of varying intensity were burning in various locations across the territory, and more than 10,000 people were evacuated. Prime Minister François Legault speaks of “never seen”. This year, Quebec has already burned more than 10 times the amount of hectares of forest that it sees go up in smoke on average in a year. And Mr. Legault predicts that it will take all summer to overcome this emergency. Day by day, the fires add up, and the Society for the protection of forests against fire, SOPFEU, is not able to fight more than thirty fires at the same time.
Are we equipped to deal with the raging fires? In the past, there were scenarios of extreme drought, episodes of lightning which served as sparks for blazes covering hundreds of square kilometres. These emergency episodes, which each time mobilize resources, decimate forests and upset communities, are not new, but they are gaining in intensity and precocity. Quebec is therefore not ruling out the possibility of expanding its response capability by adding combat equipment and personnel, and it is entirely responsible and necessary for it to consider this option. To compensate for the lack of firefighters and the exhaustion of the troops on duty, not only does Quebec call on military support, but it is also expecting reinforcements from abroad.
There will always be an element of unpredictability in this type of event, but it is no longer possible, in 2023, to plead ignorance, whether one is a government, a municipality or even a citizen. “Preparing for the worst” will be part of the habits and customs, with one modus operandi floods and another fires. While you’re at it, add ice storms, tornadoes and unexpected power outages to the toolbox. Better to be prepared than to improvise.