By Roger Caldwell
Several countries around the world have reported the worst fires in decades. Wildfires have firefighters battling fires which they cannot control, and many families are forced to evacuate their neighborhoods with no solution in sight. 2023 is one of the hottest years on record and climate change is impacting the weather.
Across the Mediterranean, California, Siberia, Southern Europe, Canada, Turkey, Greece, Italy and France are having heat waves, which creates wildfires. When the weather is 115 to 120 degrees, some people don’t have air conditioning, people are sick, and the cooling systems are broken in certain counties.
During the week of August 13th in Canada, firefighters sought to stop flames that forced the evacuation of a university campus in British Columbia. Mike Westwick, wildfire information officer said, “We’re by no means out of the woods yet,” he told Associated Press.
“We still have a serious situation. It’s not safe to return. Yellowknife, the capitol of the Northwest Territories, was a virtual ghost town after nearly all of the city’s 20,000 residents fled under evacuation.” The residents were forced to leave because of the unbearable smoke that was unhealthy to breath.
In Canada there have not been many deaths, but in Hawaii that is a different story, where hundreds of people are lost, and over 100 are confirmed dead. A massive blaze destroyed much of the historic town of Lahaina on Maui, and the search for victims’ continues.
Hawaii Governor Josh Green said, “Very little left of Lahaina where more than 2,700 structures have been destroyed in what is now the deadliest U.S. wildfire in more than a century. There are more fatalities that will come,” Green told CBS News. “The fire was so hot that what we find is the tragic finding that you would imagine, as though a fire has come through and it’s hard to recognize anybody.”
This wildfire in Hawaii, no one is taking the blame for the intensity and destruction for the blaze. At this early stage in the wildfire, no cause for the fire has been determined.
There are many businesses, homes, cars, and people who lost everything in the fire. The dry brush and grass can spread quickly in windy conditions. The wildfire season has been severe in Canada and across North America this year as hot and dry conditions persist.
Although weather conditions are impacting wildfires around the world, human activity can help improve the situation. Slowing down and reversing the accumulation of COz will slow the acceleration of wildfire risk. Droughts can also affect wildfires around the world, and countries will have to work together to find a solution.
In Hawaii, as the fires burned the city, there were no firefighters and no fire trucks to put the fire out. It is obvious that there is a plan needed to control wildfires, and now the question is, “How does America rebuild the state of Hawaii?
Predicting how climate change and human activity will affect future wildfires worldwide is difficult to examine, and know the answer. Weather conditions have already increased faster than anticipated in many wildfire regions and communities.
On the world stage failing to keep global warming under 2 degree, is the minimal goal of the Paris Agreement. Hawaii is an example of a wildfire that had no plan, and no control. What America and the world does next matters, because we need billions, and wildfires are here to stay.
