WATCH: SA firefighters arrive in Canada to help battle wildfires

More than 100 Working on Fire (WoF) firefighters landed in Canada on Wednesday, to assist the Manitoba Wildfire Service to help battle wildfires in the region. 

At present, Manitoba has 143 active wildfires, despite recent rainfall. This year so far, the province has endured 431 wildfires, surpassing their average of 370. 

WoF’s arrival was arranged by the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre. The team was tested for Covid-19 before departing from South Africa, and were tested again when they arrived in Winnipeg, the Manitoba Emergency Measures Organisation assured. 

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WoF is strengthening Manitoba’s response to the devastating blazes, which has already dispatched more than 400 of its own firefighters, as well as six water bombers and two aircraft from Quebec, four aircraft from northwest territories and more than 24 helicopters.

Climate change fuelling wildfires

Over 1,800km away, British Columbia battled wildfires for weeks in June, said to have been fuelled by a record-shattering heatwave owed to climate change. 

AFP reported that British Columbia declared a state of emergency on 21 July, with wildfires growing larger due to winds and heat. 

At least 5,700 people have been evacuated from the province, with 32,000 residents on alert. 

So far, 3,000 square kilometres have been destroyed, three times more land than is typically burnt around this time of year. 

Fires also raged along the US west coast, with over 80 large fires reported, the largest of which was in Oregon.

An area larger than Los Angeles was destroyed, and smoke reached as far as the eastern parts of the US, including New York, which issued an air quality advisory. 

Global warming is unfolding more quickly than feared and that humanity is almost entirely to blame, a damning UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report revealed on Monday.

ALSO READ: World locked into 1.5°C temperature increase by 2030 – report

Earth’s average surface temperature is projected to hit 1.5 or 1.6 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels around 2030 in all five of the greenhouse gas emissions scenarios – ranging from highly optimistic to reckless – considered by the report.

That’s a full decade earlier than the IPCC predicted just three years ago.

The only silver lining? In the most ambitious if-we-do-everything-right scenario, global temperatures – after “overshooting” the 1.5 degrees Celsius target – fall back to 1.4 degrees Celsius by 2100. 

Additional reporting by AFP