More than 10 million hectares have burned in Canada this year, a number far in excess of anything the country has ever seen and set to rise in the coming weeks, according to government data released Saturday. The previous record of burned area was 7.3 million hectares in 1989, according to national figures from the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Center (CIFFC). In all, the country has counted 4,088 fires since January, including many blazes that spread over hundreds of thousands of hectares. In addition, more than 150,000 people had to be displaced.

On Sunday, July 16, authorities also announced the death of a second firefighter who was initially injured fighting the blaze. “It is with deep sadness that we report the tragic death of a firefighter who was injured while fighting a forest fire in Fort Liard County on Saturday afternoon.said Jessica Davey-Quantick of the Northwest Territories Rescue Service, where 89 fires are ongoing and 12 are out of control. This fatality occurred in the south of this region, near the province of British Columbia, where a young 19-year-old firefighter died in a fall during an operation on Thursday.

A still serious situation

The scale of the fires and the number of them mean that the authorities do not intervene and therefore let most of them burn. It is mainly the boreal forests that are going up in smoke far away from inhabited areas. However, with serious consequences for the environment. “We are faced with numbers this year that are worse than our most pessimistic scenarios” explains Yan Boulanger, researcher at Canada’s Ministry of Natural Resources, to Agence France-Presse. “What’s absolutely crazy is that there hasn’t been a break since the beginning of May», This specialist analyzes forest fires.

also readFires in Canada: The Reasons for Worsening

As of Saturday, there were 906 fires across the country, with 570 believed to be out of control. No province is spared. At the beginning of the season, in May, it was Alberta in the west that concentrated all the concerns, as it was very quickly confronted with an unprecedented situation. A few weeks later, Nova Scotia, an Atlantic province with a very mild climate, and Quebec in particular, were again hit by mega fires.

And since the beginning of July, the situation in British Columbia has changed dramatically: last week, more than 250 fires broke out in three days, mostly caused by lightning. Large parts of Canada are suffering from a severe drought, with months of well-below-average rainfall and high temperatures. Canada, which due to its geographical location is warming faster than the rest of the planet, has faced extreme weather events in recent years, the intensity and frequency of which have increased as a result of climate change.