NWT In Year Four Of Severe Drought; Fires @ 7X 20 Year Average, Crews Already Exhausted

[hatrack]

?resize=1000 &output-quality=75

It usually takes at least a few months before forestry officials in the Northwest Territories start talking about firefighter fatigue, but all 28 fire crews had the last weekend of May off in order to avoid impending burnout. The proactive measure is just one indicator that this year's fire season is shaping up to be as intense as last year's record-breaking blowout, in which 3.5 million hectares and $60 million were consumed as crews desperately tried to control an inferno previously unseen in the typically fire-ready part of Canada.

Residents were held hostage last summer by blocked highways and smoke that made air quality levels unsafe to go outside. And this week, the territory's environment minister all but quashed any hope that things would be different this year.

"I do not wish to be the bearer of bad weather reports, but as Mother Nature may have it, and based on the reports from our meteorologist, we will once again experience drought over the summer of 2015," Environment and Natural Resources Minister Michael Miltenberger announced Monday in the NWT legislature.

Just a month into fire season, the NWT has already seen 51 fires and over 170,000 acres burn. That's seven times the 20-year average, which would see around seven fires and approximately 12,000 acres burned at this point of the year. Of this year's fires, six are confirmed holdovers from last year's fires, which burned so deeply into the ground they survived the harsh northern winter to pop up in the spring.

?resize=1000 &output-quality=75

EDIT

http://www.vice.com/read/northwest-territories-looking-at-another-record-breaking-summer-of-forest-fires-289

[Nihil]

1. The photos are impressive but so is this line:

> Of this year's fires, six are confirmed holdovers from last year's fires, which
> burned so deeply into the ground they survived the harsh northern winter to
> pop up in the spring.

Fires that survive the winter to re-kindle in the Spring?!




I know about the underground ones that have been burning for decades in some cases
but in the open? In Canada?!