Destruction measured

The area of land burned by forest fires in Northwest Ontario this year is nearly 30 times more than the area destroyed this time last year.

There were 26 new fires reported in the Northwest region on Monday, bringing the total number of active fires to 120. Officials with Ontario’s Ministry of Natural Resources reported that rainfall in the region helped reduce the number of new fires.

The total number of reported fires in Ontario is now at 807, which is below the 840 fires reported last season.

While there have been fewer fires, about 570,000 hectares of land have gone up in flames compared to the 15,000 hectares last year. That’s more than 10 times the size of Thunder Bay.

Gabby Rivard, MNR fire information officer, said the fire statistics from this season are significantly different from last season, and she is surprised there weren’t more fires this year.

“We’re in the hundreds of thousands compared to just the tens of thousands (of hectares of land burned this season),” Rivard said. “Last year at this time we had more fires but way fewer hectares burned. I thought we would have had way more fires than last year, but it only seems that way.”

Fires have been bigger because of this season’s weather conditions. Dry weather and hot temperatures combined with a lack of moisture made it easier for the fires to spread and become bigger.

“It’s pretty intense,” she said. “There isn’t enough moisture out there to contain these fires. That’s why the fire behavior is ranked three and four. It burns at a fast speed.”