Canada’s record-breaking wildfire season has taken a deadly turn after two firefighters were killed days apart, prompting a broader reckoning over the mounting economic and human toll of the unprecedented blazes that have charred swaths of the country’s boreal forests.
As of Monday, more than 10m hectares have burned across the country – an area the size of Iceland. Previously, the largest fire season on record was 34 years ago, when 7.6m hectares were left charred. But officials caution this year’s record-breaking season is only halfway done, with the sweltering temperatures expected to persist for the remainder of the summer.
With almost 900 fires burning, nearly 70 million people could once again experience poor air quality alerts from wildfire smoke, with the sooty haze of fires in western Canada expected to move eastwards to parts of the northern US and as far south as Alabama.
In Canada, however, the focus has shifted to a pair of wildfire fighters killed while battling blazes, rare fatalities that have left exhausted crews in mourning.
Officials in the Northwest Territories said this weekend that a firefighter had died on Saturday while battling a 10-hectare blaze near the community of Fort Liard, close to the border with British Columbia. Officials have not named the firefighter nor given a cause of death but on Sunday the territory’s environment minister, Shane Thompson, called the fatality “an unimaginable loss”.
Two days earlier, 19- year-old Devyn Gale died after she was pinned under a falling tree while working on a fire near the city of Revelstoke, close to where she grew up. Gale, a nursing student, was airlifted to hospital but did not survive.
“She personified the iconic reds and blues of wildland firefighting in British Columbia: she was bravery, grit, hard work, determination, leadership and selflessness,” the British Columbia wildfire service said in a statement on Sunday. “She was one of us. She was the heart of us.”
Despite the immensity and scope of the country’s fires, fatalities are relatively rare within wildfire crews, and the two deaths in such a short period have rattled crews, already fatigued and demoralized from long days battling violent and seemingly untamable fires.