7,000 B.C. Residents Flee As Fires Burn 23,000 Acres In 1 Day; 11 Heat Records In Last Week Of June
As 7,000 British Columbians were evacuated and hundreds of fires consumed 23,600 hectares of B.C. Sunday, public health and climate change researchers are working behind the scenes to help authorities brace for the greater impacts of climate change.
Although “we cannot attribute any single wildfire to climate change,” cautioned Sarah Henderson, senior scientist at the B.C. Centre for Disease Control and UBC public health professor, warming temperatures have "certainly" contributed to “more aggressive” and frequent fires which she said are no longer merely “extreme events.”
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In the final week of June, temperatures exceeded 11 heat records in the province, with Lytton reaching a searing 36.5C, its hottest in nearly a century. And a new report based on 31 climate models predicted Vancouver’s summer high temperatures will rise by at least 7C by 2100, escalating wildfire frequencies and heat-related mortalities alike.
“We cannot attribute any single wildfire to the effects of climate change,” Henderson cautioned, “but certainly there’s a lot of complex systems that are part of any given wildfire season, and we’re seeing bigger and more aggressive fires in B.C. over the past few decades. “There’s growing awareness about the need for adaptation to these events within our health authorities and larger populations themselves, and Health Canada’s quite active in trying to build communities’ resiliency.
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http://www.metronews.ca/news/vancouver/2017/07/09/wildfires-take-growing-public-health-toll-as-climate-change-.html
