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Fire engine over Lakehead, California
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JOSH EDELSON / AFP
The extreme heat in western Canada has subsided, but persistent drought and persistently high temperatures are fueling dozens of forest fires.
In the province of British Columbia alone 136 fires were recorded, as Cliff Chapman of the Wildfire Service announced on Friday.
The area around the city of Kamloops, 350 kilometers northeast of Vancouver, is particularly hard hit.
Most fires were caused by lightning.
There were 12,000 strikes in one day, Chapman said.
After the record heat of around 45 degrees Celsius, temperatures have now fallen, but are still above average.
The army is ready to support the emergency services and provide logistical help.
Soldiers have been deployed to various parts of British Columbia, Canadian Defense Minister Harjit Sajjan announced on Friday after a meeting of the crisis team led by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
Small place completely burned down
The small town of Lytton around 250 kilometers northeast of Vancouver, where the record temperature of 49.6 degrees Celsius was measured earlier this week, was almost completely destroyed by a fire.
More than 1000 people had to flee the village and the surrounding area on Thursday night after a fire had spread rapidly.
The authorities believe that two people have died.
Forensic medicine announced that it was still too dangerous to send investigators to the location of the fire disaster.
"These forest fires show that we are in the first phase of a long and challenging summer," said Canada's Minister of Public Safety, Bill Blair.
Regardless of the fires, the British Columbia heatwave contributed to hundreds of deaths, authorities said.
Around 700 sudden and unexpected deaths had been reported in the province within a week, the forensic medicine said on Friday.
That is three times more than usual.
The authority assumes that the sharp rise is related to the extreme heat.
The cause of the high temperatures is a special weather constellation in which the high pressure in the atmosphere holds the hot air in the region and the heat spreads over the land like a bell.
Since the unusually high temperatures also melt glaciers and snow in the mountains, there is an additional threat of flooding in British Columbia.
California: vegetation as dry as at the end of August
In California, too, hot and dry weather exacerbated the fire situation.
Three larger fires burned in the north, causing thousands of people to flee at times.
However, many residents were able to return to their homes on Friday.
Several buildings in the rural region were destroyed, reported the "San Francisco Chronicle".
The vegetation has already dried out as it is usually seen until the end of August, said a forest agency spokeswoman for the Shasta Trinity National Forest.
irb / AFP / dpa
