Wildfires prompt special air quality statements

Wildfires in western and northern Canada have prompted special air quality statements to be issued for areas of the country stretching from the Northwest Territories to Ontario.

Air quality alerts were issued Friday for parts of south-central NWT, eastern parts of Alberta, all of Saskatchewan, most of Manitoba and parts of northwestern Ontario, notes information posted on Environment Canada website.

For example, an Ontario alert issued by Environment Canada and the Province of Ontario reports that “forest fires over Northern Saskatchewan and Manitoba are producing significant smoke plumes that are being carried southeastward by mid- and low-level atmospheric flow.”

Notes the alert: “It is unknown how much of the smoke will remain aloft or affect ground level. Thus, it is possible that parts of Northwestern Ontario could experience deteriorated air quality from this smoke.”

An alert for central Saskatchewan issued by Environment Canada and the Province of Saskatchewan, was more definitive, citing widespread smoke across the entire province. “A large area of smoke from forest fires over Northern Saskatchewan and the Northwest Territories continues to blanket much of Saskatchewan. Visibilities have been reduced to less than 3 kilometres in many areas especially in Central and Northern Saskatchewan,” the statement notes.

“Air quality is poor in many areas due to the smoke. Smoke near the ground may potentially cause high health risk conditions,” it adds. The statement reports that light winds are expected to fail to move the large bank of smoke.

“In these current conditions, even healthy individuals may experience temporary irritation of eyes and throat, and possibly shortness of breath,” notes a special statement for southeastern Alberta, issued by Environment Canada and the Province of Alberta.

A position paper released in April – developed by the Association for Fire Ecology, the International Association of Wildland Fire and the Nature Conservancy – states that the true cost of wildfires is much higher than currently accounted for by government assessments.

“Recent analysis of the direct, indirect plus long-term, post-fire costs of wildfires in the United States, for example, show that the true cost that communities, business and governments actually pay can be from two to 30 times the amount of the official estimate of large wildfire costs,” notes Reduce Wildfire Risks or we’ll continue to pay more for fire disasters.

The paper includes estimates of total long-term wildfire costs based on four large fires in the western United States which, it argues, demonstrates that long-term total costs is many times greater than the reported costs of fire suppression and near-term recovery.

For example, the graphic shows that for the Cerro Grande fire in New Mexico in 2000, the true cost of wildfires was US$910 million, 34 times more than immediate suppression and recovery costs; and for the Rim Fire in California in 2013, the true cost was US$1.8 billion, 13 time more than immediate suppression and recovery costs.

“Wildfire mitigation should be treated like other high-cost natural disturbance events, where indirect costs are included in cost/benefit analyses,” the paper recommends. “Failure to act will only result in the cost of wildfires taking a steadily larger proportion of local, regional and national budgets.”