Due to dry, hot weather, numerous lightning strikes, and other factors, the flames that have covered a significant portion of eastern North America in smoke appeared to grow overnight in the Canadian province of Quebec in early June.
After a thunderstorm on June 1, wildfires shot up from 36 to over 100 early in this month.
The fire season appeared to begin in a typical manner, but “within three days, everything went really bad,” according to Philippe Bergeron of Quebec’s firefighting service.
Local firefighting resources have been depleted by the spreading fires.
More than 130 forest fires are currently raging in the area, and international firefighters are now starting to make their way to Quebec to assist in putting them out.
The added assistance, according to Mr. Bergeron, will “make a significant difference” for the neighborhood firemen battling to put out the fires, many of whom are putting in 14-hour shifts that start at dawn.
“You need people on the ground doing the job to put out a fire,” he remarked. “We’re going to be more effective the more people there are,”
Without the additional personnel, Mr. Bergeron claimed that Quebec’s local firefighting resources could only manage about 25 to 35 significant forest fires at a time.
As said by Mr. Bergeron, the province generally has a base of about 250 local firefighters who are prepared to fight wildfires at any given time. This number is considerably lower than the 1,200 that Quebec Premier Francois Legault has claimed is necessary to effectively combat the current fires.
With more than 280,000 hectares (691,900 acres) of land burning as of Thursday, it is already Quebec’s worst fire season.
The government trained 300 extra employees in Quebec City over the past week so they may be deployed right away to fulfill the enormous demand.
After three days of rigorous training, Mr. Bergeron claimed that “the majority of them are persons experienced in the forest, either forest workers or they have prior firefighting expertise.”
According to him, 600 more American firefighters are also traveling to Canada, with some of them perhaps arriving in Quebec as early as next week.
