Prairies choke on smoke from British Columbia forest fires
By Tamara Baluja, The Province; with files from Laura Baziuk
August 22, 2010 B.C.’s ferocious wildfires have resulted in an air-quality advisory that remained in effect Saturday for B.C., Alberta and even parts of Saskatchewan as smoke continues to drift east. There have been unconfirmed reports that the smoke has even drifted to the western parts of Ontario and can be seen in satellite images, said fire information officer Gwen Eamer. And “smoke from the wildfires that is hindering visibility is an ongoing concern” in the search for a plane that went missing Tuesday on a flight from Penticton to Victoria, according to the Canadian military. Officials at Cariboo Memorial Hospital in Williams Lake were forced Friday by heavy smoke to limit visitors and all non-urgent services. The hospital has also postponed all elective surgeries until further notice. At the Kamloops airport, 12 flights out of 20 were cancelled Thursday because of the smoke. Ed Ratuski, manager of airport operations, said it’s the first time in recent history that flights there have been affected by forest fires — even during the devastating season of 2004. Wildfire smoke has caused so many problems this year because the infernos are so large, Eamer said. The 2009 season had many more fires, but they were much smaller. To put the destruction in context, blazes had eaten up 75,000 hectares — an area bigger than Vancouver, Richmond, Burnaby and Surrey combined — in the previous 36 hours alone, Eamer said Friday. Comparing that to the 10-year average for total hectares burned at this point in the year, which is about 90,000, “we’ve burnt almost an entire year’s worth [of land] in a day,” she said. To date, 291,700 hectares have burned in B.C. — roughly three times more than the average. Eamer linked the increased fire activity to the lack of substantial rain over the past two months. …
