The Decibel - Canada’s unprecedented wildfire season

Episode Date: June 7, 2023

A lot of Canada is on fire right now – fires are burning in nearly every province and territory and the federal government says this season could see the most land burned since we started keeping records.Today, The Globe’s Lindsay Jones joins us from Halifax to talk about the biggest wildfire the province has ever seen, and why fires are so bad there this year. Then, The Globe’s Mike Hager tells us about the wildfires burning across Canada and how prepared the country is to deal with it.Questions? Comments? Ideas? Email us at [e-mail]

We were all enjoying a beautiful Sunday afternoon and the sky went black. There was just, you could smell smoke, you could taste it in the back of your throat. The black smoke was just rolling over Halifax and the whole city looked apocalyptic. The Globe's Lindsay Jones is in Halifax. Nova Scotia is seeing its largest fire ever recorded. Thousands of people have been evacuated. And this is a province that doesn't normally see wildfires of this size. And Nova Scotia isn't alone.

A lot of Canada is on fire right now. Year after year, with climate change, we're seeing more and more intense wildfires. And in places where they don't normally happen. It's early in wildfire season, and already there have been thousands of fires across the country. Bill Blair, the Minister for Emergency Preparedness, said it's probably going to get worse. I will acknowledge that the images that we have seen so far this season

are some of the most severe ever witnessed in Canada. And the current forecast for the next few months indicates the potential for continued, higher than normal fire activity. Today, we're talking to Lindsay in Halifax about what's been going on in Nova Scotia and why this season is so bad. And then we'll speak to The Globe's BC reporter, Mike Hager. He'll tell us about what's happening across the country and how prepared we are for wildfire seasons to get worse. I'm Mainika Raman-Wilms and this is The Decibel from The Globe and Mail. Lindsay, thank you so much for joining me. Thank you for having me. I'd like to start by just going through some of the numbers here.

How many fires have been going on in Nova Scotia? And can you give us a sense of how big they are? Well, there's one fire that's still burning in shelburne county in southwestern nova scotia and that's the largest fire in nova scotia's history uh all of the resources are focused on or most of the resources i should say are focused on that area right now um as of last night there's about five wildfires burning the ones in halifax that have been out of control for about a week are now considered under control. So that's a real relief for 16,000 people who have been evacuated from northwest of Halifax. And that biggest wildfire that you mentioned, can you tell me a little about that? How big is it actually? So it's about 230 square kilometers, which it's hard to picture on a map, but it's a very large

portion of southwestern Nova Scotia. And at the peak of the fires, about 6,000 people were evacuated from their homes. Wow. Lindsay, how are these fires affecting the people in the province? Well, 16,000 people evacuated from their homes in suburban Halifax is, it's unprecedented. So people are staying with relatives, they're staying with friends, they're staying in hotels. So many people, even while they're evacuated and they've gotten news that their homes are intact, are doing things to help other people. The sense of community here is great and there are so many volunteers. Teachers that are currently off work because schools are closed

or volunteering at centres to provide people with necessities. Down in Shelburne, there are volunteers making all the food to serve the volunteer firefighters and delivering it to them on the front lines. Like our whole province is chipping in right now. Wow. Those are some really heartening things to hear in such a difficult situation, obviously. Have you spoken to anyone in particular that you can tell me about kind of what their situation has been? I spoke to a family this morning who, you know, they weren't even evacuated by authorities. They chose to leave themselves after seeing the fire burning in the trees across the street from their home. The mother of Carolyn Binder of this family,

she is overdue or she was overdue more than 40 weeks pregnant at the time. And they have two other children and they ran around their house packing things up. The children were upset. And so they got everybody out in a line of cars and everyone had to drive towards the fire to get out of this subdivision because there was just one exit. They sat in the car for 10 to 15 harrowing minutes. And as the fire burned around them, this was stressful moments for the families when the fire started burning through neighborhoods. Wow. But they got out then? They got out, yeah. They've since given birth in a Halifax hospital. And they had a healthy baby boy named Leo.

And they're all staying in a hotel room downtown Halifax with their two older children and their newborn Leo in a donated sleeper that they picked up at a donation center. They're doing really well. Lindsay, what does wildfire season usually look like in Nova Scotia? Because I feel like, you know, I hear about wildfires in Western Canada often, but I feel like it's not so often at this time of the year I'm hearing about fires in Nova Scotia. So what is normal for the province? I mean, a firefighter might disagree with me,

but we don't typically have OTA control wildfires that erupt here in the summer, in the dry, hottest month of the year in which is august and uh also september there are spot fires and firefighters are called to various places in the woods or people are camping and the fire gets out of control but never to this extent have we seen so many fires at once all over the province. Like there were some days where there were 12 fires going at once. And we're just, we're not used to this many fires happening at once. And we've never had an urban fire situation to this extent either, in addition to the historic fire currently burning in Shelburne County.

And what about the climate of the province? Like is there, I guess, the conditions that are usually there in Nova Scotia, does this lend itself to not having many wildfires? Well, our springtime is usually wet and cold. And so this bone dry weather has been completely out of character for us. And we've had Environment Canada meteorologist Bob Robichaux in the paper talking about the reason for that. And, you know, we had an unusually warm winter and very little snow and rainfall. And it's just it's led to this extended dry season that set the conditions for this blaze.

It feels like a change in how we're experiencing weather here, for sure. Yeah. As you said, this is not something that Nova Scotia usually expects to deal with this time of year. So how prepared was the province to handle these fires? Well, as I mentioned, there was the fire right at the edge of an urban community that was blazing through houses and neighborhoods. And so there was a lot of resources were focused on that area, trying to save homes, trying to prevent the wildfire from spreading further into, into other neighborhoods. And so meanwhile, down in Shelburne or Shelburne County, the weather was continuing to be dry and hot and windy and the fire raged down there. And there were a lot of volunteer firefighters on the ground working that fire and a lot of resources in Halifax. And one volunteer firefighter that I spoke with felt like they were being left out, that there were no, there wasn't enough resources

diverted to them. They didn't have any provincial firefighters on the ground. Most of the volunteer firefighters who were working down in Shelburne County are over the age of 50, or at least half of them are over the age of 50. So these men and women are not used to dealing with a fire, even a fraction of the size of this. This is just not what this fire is currently burning at. It's just not anything anyone is prepared to deal with. Wow. So just lastly here, Lindsay, you're seeing some rain and cool weather in Nova Scotia this week. So hopefully a bit of relief from those wildfires. But do you think that this wildfire season is going to change the way that people in this province think about wildfires going forward?

I think so. I think that there's, you know, our government, our provincial government, it's already been identified that there's a need to have our own water bombers. Currently, Nova Scotia and PEI are the only provinces in Canada without their own water bombers. And our Premier Tim Houston has told media that after the fires have subsided that he will be reviewing this. And in the suburban area, Halifax, where the fires burned homes, people are definitely now thinking about alternate evacuation routes out of communities. That's something that wasn't thought of at the time that a lot of these subdivisions were built. And while it's been on the radar of politicians in the last few years and even some communities have created their own fire safety plans to get people out, it still hasn't been enough. And so right now, the city of Halifax has extended its state of emergency for another week, so it can build two of these roads out of the communities that were significantly impacted by fire.

So when people come back to their homes, they can feel safe. And also, the fire's not out yet. It could spread. And it's important to have these routes available now for people. Yeah. Lindsay, thank you so much for taking the time to speak with me. Thank you. After the break, The Globe's Mike Hager tells us

about the fires raging across the country and how prepared Canada is to deal with them. Mike, thank you for being here today. No problem, Annika. Thanks for having me. So we just heard about what things have been like in Nova Scotia. How does that compare to what's going on in other parts of the country? The whole country appears to be battling wildfires. People keep saying Canada's on fire, and it's, you know, not really an understatement. There's a lot of provinces battling significant blazes. Eight provinces in the Northwest Territories had significant wildfires going this weekend.

We had a bit of rain over the weekend that helped Alberta, which of course kind of exploded with a lot of fire in May. And it helped Alberta and Nova Scotia, but Quebec is now ramping up. And BC is very dry, and its season is just beginning. And it could pose very serious problems out here on the West Coast. And in terms of Hector's size of coverage of fire, can you give us some sense of that across the country? Yeah, thankfully, federal officials gave a briefing earlier this week. And at that point, there were 3.3 million hectares burned. And just for a little context, the average by this point in the fire season over the last decade

is 254,000 hectares burned. So we're just dwarfing kind of what's normal. And in terms of number of wildfires, there's been 2,200 plus wildfires compared to the average over the last decade of about 1,600 so far this season. They're predicting that we could see the most amount of terrain burned ever in Canada since we began recording that data. Wow. Okay, yeah, so this is a really different wildfire season than what we usually see.

And how many people have been affected by these fires, Mike? So about 26,000 people have been evacuated from their homes so far this season. We know now that Nova Scotians are increasingly being allowed back into their homes, especially in and around Halifax, Albertans as well. But there's still thousands, you know, sleeping in hotels with staying with friends and thousands more on alert to leave at the drop of a hat if need be. And I understand that Canada doesn't actually have enough resources within the country to fight all of these fires. So what support is

Canada getting from other countries? Yeah, we have about a thousand foreign fighters. Canada has had agreements in place to share firefighters. So we share firefighting resources, which is also equipment, with the U.S., South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, and Mexico. And we do have 100 firefighters from France coming to Quebec as well. Usually when a province needs help, the other provinces will pitch in. But when they can't, they look abroad. And the center that coordinates all those requests with our international partners is scrambling to ink more of these deals to, you know, make the pool much larger of folks from around the world

that can come help us in our time of need here. But Mike, why do we need to bring so many firefighters in from abroad? Like, why doesn't Canada have a system that can kind of be self-sustaining here? To date, our whole system of fighting wildfires has been based on the fact that one side of the country is typically burning while the other isn't. And so that side that isn't stricken can send firefighters over to the provinces that need it. But this season is just unprecedented. I hate to say it because everyone is using that word everywhere, but even provinces that don't have huge fires right now are wary because they're at risk

of those fires developing. So they don't want to be caught short. Right now you have a situation where none of the provinces can help each other really. There's some Atlantic provinces that are helping in Nova Scotia, like Newfoundland has some bombers, I think, and some staff.

But by and large, all the provincial staff are at home, either fighting fires or on a footing to start right away. But this is a much higher danger in all these provinces. And so, you know, many more staff are needed this season. And that has people renewing kind of debates about how to grapple with staffing when

we know that climate change is making the fire season more intense and longer. Yeah, yeah. I mean, what does this say about our current system, I guess, that we can't sustain so many fires at one time? Yeah. This could be a turning point this season. I mean, if the predictions are true and it is the most destructive one on record, then there's going to be a lot of questions. I asked Bill Blair's office over the weekend whether they are alive to maybe the Air Force or Armed Forces or some other sort of federal organization staffing wildfire fighters to pitch into provinces at a time like now

or even create a squadron of water bombers, as some have proposed, to be stationed at two or three bases across the country to pitch in at a moment's notice during a season like this. And they didn't answer my question, and they declined to kind of talk about it. But if this fire season continues raging like this, it's going to be tougher to ignore kind of a debate as to the role of the federal government. The federal government will have to at least engage in critics who say we need a national body.

That definitely is a debate that will continue, I believe. Yeah. So that's kind of the idea of, you know, a national body to fight these fires once they happen. But what about the other side of this, Mike? Like, can we do anything to prevent more homes from burning, more urban areas from burning, to prevent these fires from getting out of control in the first place? Like, what have you heard from the people that you're talking to? Yeah, I mean, they, experts are appreciative of this FireSmart program, which kind of clears the borders of communities that are at risk. So, you know, you get money from the province or the federal government to help your community clear up, you know, the brush surrounding it. And so that is definitely something in the short term that needs to expand. But experts are also saying we need to rethink how we plan communities.

I mean, you can't be having a subdivision built into the edge of a huge forest, you know, the same way you don't want to build a community or rebuild a community on a floodplain. So there's calls to kind of totally overhaul the way that Canadian communities are planning new developments and kind of look at the responsibility to homeowners and not bulldozing the edge of these forests when a couple years down the line they could just be swallowed up by fire. Mike, thank you so much for taking the time to speak with me. I always appreciate it. Thanks a lot, Mainika.

That's it for today. I'm Mainika Raman-Wilms. Our producers are Madeline White, Cheryl Sutherland, and Rachel Levy-McLaughlin. David Crosby edits the show. Adrian Chung is our senior producer, and Angela Pachenza is our executive editor. Thanks so much for listening, and I'll talk to you tomorrow.