British Columbia and Alberta are on fire. Tens of thousands of people have had to evacuate in Alberta, while much of B.C. is already experiencing higher-than-usual wildfire risk. With more than 150 fires currently burning across the two provinces, a hazardous haze is blanketing Calgary and affecting air quality as far away as the East Coast.
The average area burned by wildfires and the cost of suppression have grown steadily over the past 12 years, indicating increasingly larger and more intense wildfires. The 2017 fire season set the record for most hectares burned in B.C. It was surpassed in 2018. Three years later, a wildfire destroyed the town of Lytton, B.C.. That season incurred the highest ever cost of fire suppression — $718 million.
