June 09, 2023
Smoke from hundreds of wildfires in Canada has reached Europe today after blanketing the eastern United States in thick smoke this week. The smoke is now impacting Norway, according to local media reports. More than 400 fires are raging across Canada with at least half burning out of control. Tens of thousands of people have been evacuated from their homes. Air quality has improved in many of the US east coast’s largest cities including New York, Washington DC and Philadelphia, although alerts remain in places. Central and southern states like Illinois, Kansas, Georgia and Louisiana were now experiencing smoke. The Big Apple was experiencing “moderate” air quality, just above the “satisfactory” category on the Air Quality Index, on Friday morning. Nearly 1,000 firefighters arrived from Australia, Mexico, New Zealand, South Africa and the US to assist the Canadian authorities, with some 200 more expected to arrive from France and the US. Western Canada has been repeatedly struck by climate change-induced extreme weather events in recent years, including floods, mudslides, devastating forest fires that wiped out entire towns, and record-breaking summer temperatures that claimed over 500 lives in 2021. Earlier in May, wildfires in Alberta burned nearly one million hectares of forests and grasslands, displacing 30,000 individuals at one point. However, wildfires in the eastern parts of the country caused more alarm, with unprecedented wildfires in Nova Scotia's Halifax prompting the mandatory evacuation of thousands of citizens.