Canada’s wildfire took one more precious life when a helicopter crashed in Alberta province during firefighting operations, and the pilot died. After the authorities declared the pilot’s death, investigation teams headed to the crash site on the southeastern side of the town of Manning in the Peace River area. The crash occurred after two firefighters died during firefighting operations. The fire is still not coming even closer to its end, causing the death of many individuals. Canadian fire devastated thousands of miles of area, forcing thousands of civilians to leave their homes.
Across all of Canada, around 900 wildfires are burning and 500 of which are considered uncontrollable. Canada is doing tremendous firefighting work, and many countries also support and send firefighting teams to Canada. The United States has also endorsed the extinguishing efforts and sent around 1500 fighters. Most of the work is done with water or mixed with foam dropped from aircraft and helicopters. Water is filled from lakes, ponds, and rivers and released on fire. Officials express the helicopter pilot was working with bucketing operations in which specialized buckets suspended with cables are used to douse fires.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau tweeted that they were in a state of sorrow after the sudden news of a helicopter crash that killed a pilot. Prime Minister said he is heartbroken to hear that another man from the firefighting team has lost his life. He added, “We will never forget his services to the province and the nation.” According to a spokesperson for Canada’s Transportation Safety Board (TSB ), authorities first received transmissions from an emergency beacon at the crash site. Chris Krepski from TSB said the firefighting helicopter hit the ground during the operation.
Source: Web
Climate Change is Fueling the Deadly Fire
Chris said he did not know where the incident had occurred. They were trying to investigate whether it was during a release of water or filling it. Officers reached the spot around 2 hours after the crash, as the site was inaccessible by roads. They evacuated the pilot to Peace River Airport and declared him dead. This incident occurred just a few days after two wildfire fighters died during the operations on blazes in different locations, one in the Northwest and the other in British Columbia. Just before the helicopter crash incident, Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault expressed on Thursday that they felt the loss and were happy about the victims’ dedication and service in fighting against blazes.
For Canada, all the previous records of the loss by fire in a single year are broken. This time the fire burnt more areas in a single year. Only this year so far, blazes have reached and devastated almost 24 million acres in Canada. Roughly, this area is about the size of American Island, Indiana. Mr. Steven added that climate change also makes the fire season even worse. They are confident in trying to keep people safe from the ferocious fire this year and are ready for the following years.
Minister added that climate change had caused the hot and dry weather, which makes fire spreading easy and firefighting operations challenging. He said that the global climate has become 1.1 Celsius hotter since the beginning of the industrial era, and temperature can only be controlled if governments take severe steps towards cutting emissions. The smoke raised from the Canadian wildfire this year has spread to the whole of Canada and America, endangering the health of millions of citizens.
