It’s hard to imagine a more terrifying and excruciating way to die — trapped by wildfire as the flames close in. Richard and Sue Nowell were killed this week by the Manitoba wildfires, leaving two sons orphaned and homeless. The deaths turned “an emergency into a tragedy,” said Premier Wab Kinew.
It had seemed to be a relatively subdued beginning to fire season in Canada compared to the past couple of years. There have been a few more fires than last year but significantly less area burned across the country by this date. The most striking exception is Manitoba, where fires have claimed over 161,000 hectares — four times more than last year.
In Manitoba, over 1,000 people have been evacuated and our news feeds are beginning to fill with evacuation orders in other provinces. It has barely cracked Canadian news, but the boreal forests elsewhere in the world are up in flames too.
Over 600,000 hectares have burned in the Lake Baikal region of Russia, just since late April. More than 1.4 million hectares have burned in Siberia since the beginning of the year. Smoke is expected to spread as far as Beijing and the Korean peninsula this weekend.
South Korea is just recovering from the worst wildfires in its history — simultaneous outbreaks that killed 32 people, displaced 37,000 and burned about 5,000 buildings, including temples dating to the 7th century.
“The scale and speed of the fires were unlike anything we’ve ever experienced in South Korea,” said June-Yi Lee, an atmospheric scientist at Pusan National University. Scientists at World Weather Attribution calculated that climate change made the fire conditions about twice as likely.
It’s only May and it’s always impossible to know what will happen in any given year, but Canadian wildfire experts are warning us not to be complacent.
“The dice are loaded,“ says Mike Flannigan, one of Canada’s foremost experts and a professor at Thompson Rivers University. How many fires and where they occur, “will depend on the day-to-day weather and the ignitions we get.”
Here’s how the forecasters at Natural Resources Canada see the outlook for fire weather severity into August. By late summer, they expect level 5 (on a scale of 5) fire weather severity over most of the population centres across Western Canada:
Double zombies
Some of the fires now burning in BC and Alberta are “zombie fires” — fires that smouldered on through winter — now with an added, disturbing twist.
“This is the first time I’ve seen fires in Canada survive two winters and I’ve been watching fires closely since the 1970s,” says Flannigan. “A number of these fires started in 2023, burned through the winter… continued to grow in 2024 and then survived this winter.”
Signed, Seared, Delivered
Several civil society groups are organizing to keep climate change and wildfires on the political agenda. My Climate Plan built on its “Don’t Let Canada Burn” campaign and helped “impact voters” get their voices heard in swing ridings during the federal election.
The Sierra Club of Canada curated exhibits of artifacts from wildfires, floods and hurricanes in Canada, and it has been helping climate survivors push the Carney government to implement an emissions cap on the oil and gas industry.
The Climate Emergency Unit just launched a campaign for Canadians to send postcards to the prime minister and key ministers. Each one has an image of an iconic Canadian location along with “a scorching message about the climate crisis.”
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