Most wildfires in Canada are impossible to fight.<\/p>\n
As smoke from forest fires in Canada have darkened skies south of the border, lawmakers in Michigan, Ohio and other U.S. states have accused the Canadian authorities of inaction and poor forest management. But most wildfires in Canada spread in such remote, vast areas that they cannot be fought effectively \u2014 and are often left to burn.<\/p>\n
Half of Canada\u2019s wildfires, like the ones now burning in northern Ontario, burn in such areas \u2014 either unpopulated or dotted with small Indigenous communities, said Michael Flannigan, an expert on fire management at Thompson Rivers University in British Columbia. They are most often accessible only by plane, with no roads for firefighters.<\/p>\n
Water bombers can help from the air, Mr. Flannigan said. \u201cThey buy you time for the ground crews to put the fire out,\u201d he said. \u201cThe boots on the ground put the fires out.\u201d<\/p>\n
But not only is it impossible to get firefighters on the ground in such remote areas, there is also insufficient time to react to the fires. Started mostly by lightning, they spread in the highly combustible boreal forest before firefighters can respond within the first critical 30 minutes.<\/p>\n
Most fires are put out when they are small, Mr. Flannigan said. \u201cBut in those areas, the half-hour window passes, and the fire is up and running.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cTo be blunt, even if we spend a lot more money, I don\u2019t think we could stop these fires,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n