In British Columbia last week, temperatures rose to 121°F in the town of Lytton. Then an uncontrollable wildfire swept through it killing residents and destroying most of it.
In Unprecedented Heat, Hundreds Dead and a Town Destroyed. Climate Change is Frying the Northern Hemisphere, Angela Dewan reports for CNN that Canadians experienced highest-ever temperatures, “in an unprecedented heat wave that has over a week killed hundreds of people and triggered more than 150 wildfires across British Columbia, most of which are still burning... Scientists have warned for decades that climate change will make heat waves more frequent and more intense. That is a reality now playing out in Canada, but also in many other parts of the northern hemisphere that are increasingly becoming uninhabitable.”
Watch a harrowing video as a resident of Lytton drives fleeing the flames in the CNN report here.
In the Los Angeles Times report, California Hit by Record-breaking Fire Destruction: ‘Climate Change is Real, it’s Bad’, Hayley Smith writes, “California is off to another record-breaking year of wildfires as the state enters its most dangerous months, with extreme heat and dry terrain creating the conditions for rapid spread... More than twice as many acres burned in the first six months of this year than during the same period last year — and hundreds more fires, officials said...
‘The exceptional fire weather this year and in recent years does not represent random bad luck,’ said Jacob Bendix, a Syracuse University professor who specializes in pyrogeography, or the study of wildfire distribution. ‘It is among the results of our adding carbon to the atmosphere — results that were predictable, and indeed that have been predicted for decades.’...
“Though last year was the worst wildfire season California has seen — with over 4 million acres burned — the potential to surpass it is there, said Cal Fire spokeswoman Lynne Tolmachoff. ‘We just kind of have to wait and see what Mother Nature does,’ she said.”
Across the globe, Mike Hudema reports that raging Siberian wildfires in Russia’s Yakutia region are burning 250,000 acres per day. Watch video of firemen on the road to Magadan surrounded by flames.
Read the L.A. Times report here.
Photo credit: Jean Beaufort