The threat of a wildfire near Fort McMurray, Alberta, in the heart of Canada’s oil sands, has forced thousands of residents to evacuate and stirred memories of devastating wildfires nearly a decade ago. The next day, Wednesday, it seemed to be getting better.
Favorable winds are expected to keep the fire away from the northwestern Canadian city of about 68,000 people, many of whose residents earn their wages in the nearby oil industry. The Fort McMurray fire marks the start of a new fire season in Canada after a record number of wildfires last year created choking smoke across the United States and forced more than 235,000 Canadians to evacuate their communities. It happened just after I entered.
But scientists said it’s not clear whether wildfire smoke will be the same problem as last year, when unusual weather patterns moved the haze south.
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In Fort McMurray, about 6,600 residents have been evacuated from parts of the city’s south end, while others remain on alert. The area was familiar terrain for the Alberta city, which had survived devastating fires in 2016 that destroyed 2,400 homes and forced the evacuation of more than 80,000 people.
Jay Telegdy, who lost his home in the wildfires, watched from his balcony Tuesday as the downtown sky turned orange and black. Telegdy said in a phone interview that walking outside was “burning my eyes,” adding that he was breathing a little easier Wednesday.
“You get used to it,” said Telegdy, who works for the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation. “We have come to accept plumes of smoke that block the entire sky, yet we continue to drill for oil.”
Manitoba Premier Wab Kinew investigates wildfires in northern Manitoba from a helicopter on May 14, 2024. (David Lipnowski/Canadian Press, via AP)
Canada is the world’s fourth-largest oil producer and fifth-largest gas producer, but this reality is undermining the country’s commitments to protect biodiversity and lead the global fight against climate change. is unpleasant. When oil and gas burn, they release heat-trapping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, exacerbating the very conditions that cause wildfires to burn millions of acres.
In Canada, it burned an area larger than the state of New York last year, emitting nearly three times the emissions the country’s entire economy produces in a year and pumping toxic air into U.S. cities thousands of miles away. There were no civilian casualties, but at least four firefighters were killed.
Dave Phillips, a senior climatologist with Environment Canada, a government agency, said the smoke that reached the U.S. East Coast last year came primarily from eastern Canada.
“This was strange in the sense that most of Canada’s wildfires occur in British Columbia and Alberta. We rarely see fires start in Quebec, and the smoke can travel all the way to the United States. “We’re going,” Phillips said, adding that eastern Canada has had a lot of rain this spring. And it’s getting much cooler.
Mike Flanigan, a professor of wildland fires at Thompson Rivers University in British Columbia, said the “legacy effects” of last year’s season are being felt into 2024. Continued drought in western Canada, rising temperatures due to El Niño, and so-called ‘zombie fires’ Organic matter burns underground during the winter and flares up again when the snow melts in the spring.This phenomenon is believed to be the cause of wildfires in some parts of the country. It has become.”
Alberta, including Fort McMurray, receives significant revenue from the fossil fuel industry. Suncor Energy said Wednesday that none of its operations outside the city were affected by the fire, but some employees and contractors were. Fire officials said evacuation orders will likely be in effect for Fort McMurray until Tuesday.
Charlie Angus, an MP from the left-wing New Democratic Party, said in X that oil companies such as Exxon Mobil and Shell “were predicting the climate change that is changing life forever”, and journalists, scientists and advocacy groups. said the study confirmed that in subsequent research. Year.
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“They didn’t bother to tell the people of Fort McMurray who were living with the effects of peak C02,” Angus wrote.
In neighboring British Columbia, fire activity that has forced thousands of people to evacuate in and around Fort Nelson, a town of about 4,700 people, was expected to weaken as a low-pressure system moved into the northern part of the province. . The state’s wildfire bureau said.
In Manitoba, about 500 people have been forced to flee their homes in the remote northwestern community of Cranberry Portage as a fire burns more than 300 square kilometers. Officials announced Wednesday that the fire was about 80% contained and residents could be allowed to return to their homes this weekend.
