Oct. 31 marked the official end of Alberta’s 2023 wildfire season, which saw a total of 1,092 wildfires burn a record 2.2-million hectares, according to the Alberta government.
The total number of fires was in line with the five-year average of 1,100 for the 2018-2022 period, but the total area burned was a 10-fold increase over the 190,000-hectare average for the same period. That means this season was “10 times more severe,” the province said in a media release issued Friday.
Over the 2023 season — which officially began March 1 — 48 Alberta communities and more than 38,000 people were evacuated due to forest fires.
“Our province faced an unprecedented challenge this past wildfire season,” Forestry and Parks Minister Todd Loewen said. “Wildfire staff worked tirelessly to keep our forests and communities safe, showing strength and determination through their efforts. While this season was not without its difficulties, the way Albertans and industry leaders stepped up to support their neighbours was nothing short of inspiring.”
The province said it’s already planning for next wildfire season. In its news release, it said the government is “enhancing current and identifying new technologies or techniques that can be used effectively in Alberta.”
This past season, Alberta Wildfire used tools such as night-vision technology, helicopters and drones to extend hours of firefighting and develop better assessments of wildfires and hot spots.
Alberta’s interactive wildfire status map was viewed more than five million times over the season.
And while the wildfire season is officially over, the threat continues in parts of the province.
According to Nathan Gillett, a research scientist with Environment and Climate Change Canada, the risk of wildfire is increasing and governments should be looking at forest management practices, the types of trees that are planted, disaster response and urban planning to reduce the impact.
“There are still going to be changes that we can’t adapt to,” Gillett said in May 17 interview with Global News, “and wildfire has real impacts on people, some of which we can’t avoid.”
At the time of Gillet’s interview, wildfires in Alberta had consumed 728,000 hectares of land.
“Climate change is warming the climate across Canada,” Gillett continued.
“We know it’s increasing the chance of heat waves… As the climate gets warmer, as we see more heat waves, that dries out the forest more quickly, it dries out the litter, and that increases the risk of wildfire.”
There will still be year-to-year variations, he added. “But over time, we expect more heat waves, more extreme fire seasons like the one we’re seeing now in Alberta. These events are going to become more and more frequent into the future as the climate continues to warm.”
Gillett said climate change also tends to make the wildfire season longer.
“The snow melts earlier, the forest can dry out earlier and that lengthens the forest fire season.”
Not only is the trend “concerning,” Gillett said it has real impacts on people’s daily lives.
“People have (had) to evacuate their homes or even had homes destroyed. Also, it has impacts on air quality. The smoke from wildfires spreads across a much larger area (and) that has impacts for people who have respiratory diseases, for example.”
When asked about climate change and wildfires earlier in the year’s season, Loewen said, “There’s no doubt that a changing climate has changed things in Alberta and around the world.
“We look at the number and intensity of fires this year and the widespread fires that we have. It’s something that we haven’t seen before. In past years, we’ve had large fires that burned expansive areas, but this year we have multiple fires across the province.”
Loewen said Alberta was experiencing high heat and low humidity and needed to “be able to adapt.” He said the Alberta government would review its approach for this season and beyond.
“We’re doing really well with the hand we’ve been dealt, weather-wise, but we’ll be constantly improving. We need to be careful as we go forward and be conscious of the environment.”
Canada as a whole saw a record-breaking wildfire season in 2023.
By the end of October, 6,517 wildfires in Canada had burned 18.5 million hectares (46 million acres), about five per cent of the country’s entire forest area and more than 10 times the amount of last year.
The land that has burned so far this year is about double the size of Portugal. All 13 provinces and territories have been affected to varying degrees, with tens of thousands of people evacuated and at least four firefighters killed.
“Business as usual is not going to be successful in dealing with the fire situation that is unfolding,” Dark Days at Noon: The Future of Fire author Edward Struzik said. “We can’t be dealing with fire the way we were dealing with it in the 20th century. It’s a new 21st-century phenomenon and there has got to be new strategies to deal with this situation.”
To do so, Struzik said he believes that a wildfire strategy coordinated on the national level is a vital first step, involving federal, provincial, municipal and Indigenous governments as well as the business community.
Researchers such as Struzik and Ellen Whitman, a forest fire scientist with Natural Resources Canada, believe that the restoration of peatlands, Indigenous-led prescribed burning, national organization and learning to live with fire will be key to how we move forward. This may include rethinking how homes and communities are built to minimize the risks in the event of an approaching fire.
With files from Katherine Cheng, Global News