About 32,500 properties are under evacuation alerts in British Columbia, the province said in a bulletin Monday, while residents in more than 6,500 other properties have already been ordered to evacuate. The province currently has 273 active wildfires, the bulletin notes, amid a total of 1,445 since April that have burned more than 1.5 million acres. The wildfires scorching areas of Canada and the United States in recent years may be only the beginning of the areas’ woes, according to a new United Nations scientific report. Kim Connors, executive director at the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre, a coordinating authority for firefighting resources, said the country saw a similar wildfire situation in 2017. The problem has been magnified by cutbacks in aid and resources from the United States, because of its own battle with wildfires, and countries like New Zealand and Australia, which have been unable to dispatch crews because of pandemic travel restrictions.

Source: New York Times August 09, 2021 21:33 UTC