World on Fire: 2023 is Canada's worst wildfire season on record — and it's not over yet
CBC
*This episode originally aired in May 2016 during the Fort McMurray wildfire. It has been updated with new material.
You can hear more World on Fire in an eight-part original CBC podcast.
With choking smoke filling our skies in a summer that can only be described as unprecedented, no region of Canada has gone completely untouched by 2023's devastating wildfire season.
More than 15 million hectares have gone up in smoke across the country this year, shattering the previous record of 7.6 million hectares in 1989 as well as the 10-year average of 2.5 million hectares.
And while the Labour Day long weekend may be the unofficial end to our Canadian summer, climate experts say it won't be the end of the smoke or the flames.
The fires that have punctuated this year's summer have spread further, burned faster and are predicted to last longer than some climate experts could ever have imagined.
Wildfire officials are forecasting above-average severity to continue well into the fall for much of the country, which means Canada's worst wildfire season on record might also be its longest.
So far this year, 6,118 wildfires have been reported across Canada.
At least four wildland firefighters have died on duty in Canada since July.
Nearly 200,000 Canadians have been placed under an evacuation order this season.
In June, the Donnie Creek wildfire became the largest wildfire on record in B.C., surpassing the size of P.E.I. at 5,745 sq. km.
5,821 domestic firefighters and 4,990 international firefighters have been deployed to help tame the flames, according to Michael Norton, the director general of the northern forestry centre at Natural Resources Canada.
Climate change more than doubled the likelihood of extreme fire weather conditions in Eastern Canada, according to a study by World Weather Attribution.
Out-of-control wildfires have affected so many people this summer — not just in Canada but around the world, with Greece, Spain, Russia and Hawaii also enduring record-smashing wildfire seasons.
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