Wildfire risk will increase sharply in certain Quebec regions

Plumes of smoke are visible in the forest and burnt areas near Lebel-sur-Quevillon, Wednesday 5 July 2023. (Adrian Wyld, The Canadian Press)

While residents of southern Quebec are mopping up the remains of the deluge caused by the last breath of Hurricane Beryl, the north of the province will be entering a very high forest fire risk zone from Friday.

"We are well aware that there are flooding problems in certain areas to the south, but in certain regions, particularly the Côte-Nord, northern Quebec, the upper Saguenay-Lac-Saint-Jean, north of La Tuque and Abitibi-Témiscamingue, our indices are really increasing significantly," said Stéphane Caron, prevention coordinator at Quebec's forest fire prevention agency (SOPFEU).

The vastness of Quebec's territory means that all extremes can occur at the same time.

On Thursday, the fire risk is generally low or moderate in what SOPFEU calls the intensive protection zone, where there are seven active fires.

In the northern zone, the situation is a little more difficult, with a very high or even extreme risk in the vicinity of James Bay, in particular.

In this sector, 66 fires are active.

Sharp rise in risk

From Friday and even more so on Saturday, the dry weather forecast will increase the risk exponentially, reaching high and very high levels in the regions Caron mentioned, and even extreme levels in the Baie-Comeau area. It's a sharp enough increase, in fact, for SOPFEU to issue a warning: "In a case like this, it's not just the fire danger that's high. It's really our severity indices in terms of the potential for fire propagation or intensity. If there are fires in this context, they spread more easily."

The good news in all this is that the summer of 2024 to date does not promise to be as catastrophic as last year, the year of all records for forest fires.

"There is no comparison at the moment in the intensive protection zone, where we fight all the fires," said Caron. "We have just over a hundred fewer fires than the average for the last 10 years overall in the intensive protection zone. We're really having a short season."

In the northern zone, it's a completely different story, where "we still have many more fires than usual, but we're not fighting them all; we're only fighting those that threaten strategic infrastructures or communities."

Open fires banned

Late on Thursday, the Ministry of Natural Resources and Forestry issued a ban on open fires.

The ban will come into force at 8 a.m. on Friday and will apply to Nord-du-Québec, Côte-Nord, the north of Saguenay-Lac-Saint-Jean and Mauricie, as well as Abitibi-Témiscamingue.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published in French on July 11, 2024.