Smoke rises from a wildfire burning near Whyte Lake which caused the closure of the Sea-To-Sky Highway linking Vancouver with the resort town of Whistler, in West Vancouver, on June 26.BC WILDFIRE SERVICE/Reuters
The air quality improved in densely populated areas of southern Quebec and Ontario on Sunday, but more wildfires continue to flare up across the country.
Environment Canada smog warnings and air-quality statements around Montreal and Ottawa were lifted, while others remained in areas closer to wildfires in northern parts of British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba Sunday.
There were 569 active wildfires across the country around noon, according to the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre (CIFFC), a sharp increase from a few days earlier fuelled mostly by new fires in Western and central provinces. The majority of new wildfires are believed to have a natural origin.
With more than eight million hectares of forest already burned this year, 2023 is the worst wildfire season on record, CIFFC data show.
In B.C., parts of Kelowna, a city of nearly 150,000 people, were briefly under evacuation order Saturday after a fire started about 2 kilometres northwest of downtown, on Knox Mountain. The 6.5-hectare fire, likely human-caused according to the BC Wildfire Service, was categorized as “being held” Sunday, meaning it was unlikely to spread further.
Kelowna residents remained under evacuation alert as they could be asked again to leave on short notice.
Sandy Feil, who lives next to Knox Mountain Park and was asked to evacuate Saturday afternoon, said she was not home at the time, but police let her and her husband go back and grab a few things. They were prepared.
“We often talk about what we would take, because we’re surrounded by parkland,” Ms. Feil said. They took clothes, computers, passports and a few other personal items with them, but were allowed back home later that night. “We’re just incredibly grateful to our amazing team of firefighters that trained and worked so hard to keep us safe,” she said.
Elsewhere in the province, evacuation orders were issued earlier this week by the Regional District of Bulkley-Nechako, the Takla First Nation and the Northern Rockies Regional Municipality, while several other communities were under evacuation alert in the Peace River Regional District and the District of Tumbler Ridge.
In Quebec, where thousands were still under evacuation orders earlier this week, “weather conditions in the last few days reduced the intensity of several forest fires” and most evacuees were able to return home, according to the Ministry of Public Security.
There were thunderstorms and rain showers in several areas of the province, including Rivière-Éternité, in Quebec’s Saguenay-Lac-Saint-Jean region, where two people went missing in a landslide after it rained about 130 millimetres in two hours Saturday, according to Environment Canada. Severe thunderstorm warnings remained in place Sunday afternoon in the region.
Frédérick Boulay, a meteorologist with the federal agency, said a heat wave covering much of Ontario is expected to move eastward to Quebec and linger over both provinces until the end of the week, bringing high temperatures and humidity but scant precipitations.
At the peak of wildfire evacuations in May and June, tens of thousands of Canadians were forced out of their homes mainly in Alberta, Quebec and Nova Scotia.
On Tuesday, the federal government launched its National Adaptation Strategy, saying it would help reduce risk and build climate-resilient communities facing direct consequences of worsening global warming, including increased wildfire risk.