{"id":823826,"date":"2026-07-24T20:33:09","date_gmt":"2026-07-24T20:33:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/823826\/"},"modified":"2026-07-24T20:33:09","modified_gmt":"2026-07-24T20:33:09","slug":"thousands-of-lightning-strikes-trigger-fresh-wildfires-in-western-canada-canada","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/823826\/","title":{"rendered":"Thousands of lightning strikes trigger fresh wildfires in western Canada | Canada"},"content":{"rendered":"

Fresh wildfires have broken out in western Canada<\/a> and forests continued to \u2060burn in Ontario as the country \u2060battled what the prime \u200bminister, Mark Carney, called one of the most intense wildfire seasons on record.<\/p>\n

Nearly 34,000 lightning strikes over the past week led to a series of fires \u2060and evacuation orders in southern British Columbia. There were 25 evacuation orders and 90 active wildfires in the province as of Friday morning, and authorities said warming \u2060and drying conditions could cause them to grow.<\/p>\n

Hugh Murdoch, the incident commander of a cluster of fires near Kimberley, 320 miles (520km) from Vancouver, said: \u201cThe weather forecast is far from favourable. There is no significant \u200bhelp from mother nature whatsoever in the foreseeable \u200cfuture.\u201d<\/p>\n

Wildfires fuelled by intense heat and \u200clightning storms attributed to warmer temperatures have burned remote forests across Canada this summer. Smoke from them drifted across large US east coast and midwestern cities last week.<\/p>\n

Smoke from Canadian wildfire smoke hanging in the air over New York last week. Photograph: Christopher Neundorf\/EPA<\/p>\n

There were 139 active wildfires in north-west Ontario, of which 32 were not under control.<\/p>\n

Environment Canada issued an alert for poor air quality in Banff, Alberta and surrounding areas on Friday but said conditions were expected to improve for most areas over the weekend.<\/p>\n

Carney \u200csaid in a statement that the federal government would mobilise more than 5,300 firefighters and about 300 water bombers, helicopters and evacuation aircraft to battle the fires. Mexico would also send as many as 200 firefighters in the coming weeks, he added.<\/p>\n

Thousands of people, including some First Nations communities, have been evacuated this summer. About 2.95m hectares (7.29m acres) of land have been burned this year, above the 10-year \u2060average of about 2.55m hectares. Canada currently has more active wildfires than it did at the same \u200btime in either of the \u200bpast two years.<\/p>\n

The country\u2019s forested areas account \u200bfor 28% of the world\u2019s boreal forests.<\/p>\n

Improving weather in the east has helped Quebec tame \u200bsome blazes with help \u200cfrom firefighters from \u200bneighbouring provinces, France and the \u200bUS.<\/p>\n

St\u00e9phane Caron,, of the province\u2019s forest fire prevention agency Sopfeu, said: \u201cThe situation in Quebec is under control. We have good weather to help us. We have to make sure that there\u2019s no hotspot on the ground any more because if there\u2019s hot weather and no rain, the fire can be back.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Fresh wildfires have broken out in western Canada and forests continued to \u2060burn in Ontario as the country…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":823827,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[49,48,44],"class_list":["post-823826","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-canada","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/823826","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=823826"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/823826\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/823827"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=823826"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=823826"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=823826"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}