Fire crews in Washington state, still grieving Wednesday’s loss of four firefighters in a “hellstorm” of flame outside Twisp, Wash., are combating one of the driest and most explosive wildfire seasons on record. At least 10 fires were burning in north-central Washington’s Okanogan County alone, where entire towns have emptied as their inhabitants headed for safety.
Western Canada has also battled wildfires exacerbated by the El Nino weather system this summer, and they’re not entirely out of the woods yet. A stronger El Nino could extend Saskatchewan’s fire season until October, a provincial fire official said Thursday, as many weather models predict more hot, dry weather in the West in the coming months.
Scott Wasylenchuk, manager of Saskatchewan’s provincial forest fire centre, says crews and equipment will be kept running longer if necessary, CJME reported.
Accuweather is forecasting an abnormally high number of days over 30 C into early October. Wasylenchuk says if that happens, it will lengthen the time the forest will be dry. But he also says there have been fires burning into late summer. “What tends to save us [in fall] is that humidities are a bit higher. The days are shorter. We have lots of dew in the morning so the fire intensities aren’t as great.”
The bill is still coming in on the cost of this year’s fire season in Saskatchewan. At the end of July the province said it had spent more than $100-million fighting fires in the north. At the peak of the crisis more than 13,000 people were evacuated from 50 northern communities. More than 100 structures, mostly cabins, were destroyed.
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