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Impossible to let our guard down": BJ Fuchs, a farmer in western Canada, is still scarred by the fight of recent days against the fire that has spared his property but not the surrounding fields and forests. All the pens intended for his cows are empty and immersed in thick smoke. You can't see five metres away.
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The fire was really powerful, it's quite scary when the flames are so close to you, "says the man, cowboy hat on his head and who wears a beard of a few days. Shortly before the flames arrived, he and his son managed to evacuate his entire herd of nearly 1000,<> head. On his land, near the manure spread to stop the fire, smoke still escapes from a pile of burnt spruce and poplar wood.
The province of Alberta has been affected since early May by fires of unprecedented magnitude, which have already burned more than 400,000 hectares. The province declared a state of emergency and requested assistance from the federal government. Some 70 fires were still active on Friday, twenty of which were out of control.
'A constant battle'
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It's going to be a constant battle until we have a lot more rain, that's for sure," he added, adding that he feared the return of high temperatures expected for this weekend. Like his neighbors, he is on alert and does not stop surveying the fields to monitor the resumption of fires. He laments the state of drought of all the nature around.
See alsoHow to explain the violence of the fires that have already ravaged 400,000 hectares in Canada?
The province, one of the largest oil-producing regions in the world, is also a rural area with many farms. Almost half are cattle farms like BJ Fuchs', but the province also produces a lot of wheat, grains and oilseeds. Canada is a major agricultural exporter. "Literally hundreds of thousands of animals are potentially affected because of the vastness of the area" of the fires, said Danielle Smith, premier of Alberta.
'Desperate'
Watering buildings, installing huge pools of water, cutting brush to try to make fire barriers... All farmers are hard at work. "It's desperate, we don't know where it's going to stop, or if it's going to stop," said Jessee Crowthers, also a cattle farmer who saw part of her neighbor's farm go up in smoke. "There is always something," he laments, referring to the natural disasters that hit the region repeatedly, amid tractors and agricultural machinery that were set on fire. "The drought, the hail, the heavy rains--we take what comes and we continue," adds the man with the large build, black cap on his head.
This unprecedented fire season comes after difficult years marked by a severe drought in 2021, which caused the harvest to drop throughout central and western Canada, reducing agricultural yields by 40%. That year, a "historic" heat dome killed hundreds and was followed by large fires.
'No choice but to be prepared'
In recent years, Western Canada has been hit by extreme weather events, the intensity and frequency of which are increased by climate change. For fires, there's no choice but to be "prepared," says Trent Stanley because "the local firefighters, who are volunteers, take half an hour to get to the station and another half hour to get here, but by the time that happens, your property is gone."
The help of the inhabitants is therefore sometimes crucial. In particular, the authorities have asked farmers this year to clear and sow as much as possible because this allows to bury the sources of fuel and thus slow the spread of fires.
But for cattle, sometimes there is nothing to do. "It's impossible for me" to move them. "This spring, I have 850 cattle cows. It's not like you can load them in minutes," laments the farmer with a wide cowboy hat. "I guess the plan could be to open the fences and maybe the cattle would know where to go, but I doubt it," he said.