Good morning. This is Wendy Cox in Vancouver.
A heat dome will settle this weekend over British Columbia and Alberta. The phrase was unfamiliar to most outside meteorologist circles before 2021, when a previous heat dome pushed temperatures into the 40s in B.C. and led to some 600 deaths, making it one of Canada’s deadliest weather events.
This weekend’s heat dome won’t come close to that. But May is early for such a thing, and wildfires have already forced thousands across Alberta to flee their homes. The coming heat is expected to exacerbate the flood risk in B.C. as the last of the snowpack melts, and it could fuel the fires burning in Alberta.
Natural disasters are a time for politicians to shine or to fail. Or to flail, as Globe reporters illustrate this weekend.
The fires in Alberta have posed a particularly awkward dilemma for a campaigning Danielle Smith. As Kelly Cryderman writes today, the wildfire situation has forced her into territory her United Conservative Party campaign team surely never planned to enter. Now, she is awkwardly having to toggle back and forth between disaster response and criticizing her NDP opponents.
Meanwhile, the fires have underlined concerns about climate change – not exactly a UCP talking point – and given poignance to a story by The Canadian Press about the UCP’s decision to cut its wildfire response capacity. Kelly writes: “In what seems an ultimate example of being penny-wise and pound-foolish, the province in 2019 cut the elite team of firefighters – the Rapattack team – trained to rappel from helicopters to get at wildfires early.”
More than 1,000 firefighters have been deployed to Alberta since the fires began, with hundreds more expected to arrive next week. The military will be adding 300 members to provide assistance.
Last weekend, the Alberta government declared a state of provincial emergency. There were 76 active wildfires as of Friday afternoon, with 22 burning out of control. Nearly 16,500 Albertans remain out of their homes, down from around 31,000 at the peak.
In British Columbia, the coming heat prompted reporter Justine Hunter to check back on the progress of lessons learned since the deadly 2021 heat dome.
She found gaps.
Provincial Health Officer Bonnie Henry told Justine there has been progress: Health authorities have installed air conditioning in some long-term care homes and hospitals, and the province has more robust emergency response plans.
At the local level, community groups have been asked to be ready to reach out to vulnerable citizens for wellness checks. Municipal governments have built up infrastructure to ensure that people can find places to cool off. Ambulance services have been expanded.
And on Wednesday, the province tested its registration-required Alert Ready system, which will be used to send direct-to-cellphone warnings (to those who have signed up) when a heat emergency is expected. That system was not available in 2021.
But the province’s recently amended building code does not include cooling requirements in new housing construction, and B.C. is still studying how to provide air conditioning to those who need it most. Critically, it is still trying to identify those most at risk, based on age, health conditions, financial status and living circumstances.
Daniel Stevens, director of Emergency Management for the City of Vancouver, was busy this past week getting cooling centres and other services ready for the heat.
He is confident that residents are now far more aware of the risk posed by extreme heat – something that many West Coasters didn’t understand before the heat dome. The emergency alert system is also a big improvement, he said.
But he worries that is not enough.
“None of our cooling centres have been at capacity,” he said. “We’re concerned that the most vulnerable people aren’t coming out.”
This is the weekly Western Canada newsletter written by B.C. Editor Wendy Cox and Alberta Bureau Chief Mark Iype. If you’re reading this on the web, or it was forwarded to you from someone else, you can sign up for it and all Globe newsletters here.