EFE

Toronto.- A contingent of 240 bombers from Portugal and Spain went to Quebec (Canada) to participate in the extinguishing of forest fires that were active in the Canadian province in one of the few times of fires in modern history from the country.

The group, made up of 140 firefighters from Portugal and 100 from Spain, arrived around 4:00 p.m. local time in Quebec, following the request for help made on June 7 by the Canadian government to European authorities. This is the first time since the existence of the European Union’s Emergency Response Coordination Center (ERCC) that Canada has requested the sending of European personnel specialized in firefighting.

This Wednesday, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said that in the years to come, the North American country will continue to need the reinforcement of foreign firefighters in the face of the expected increase in forest fires due to the effects of climate change. Angela Iglesias, head of the Spanish contingent, told EFE upon her arrival in Quebec that the participation of Spanish firefighters was possible thanks to the fact that at present in Spain the risk of fire is “unusually” low.

The contingent is made up of personnel from Madrid, Catalonia and Murcia, among other regions. The Spanish firefighters, who will initially remain in Canada until June 30, will head Thursday to the town of Roberval, about 250 kilometers north of Quebec, where a fire has been burning for weeks which has already consumed 7,059 hectares of forest. Before leaving for Roberval, Spanish personnel will receive a briefing on the situation from SOPFEU, the Quebec agency responsible for coordinating forest fire suppression tasks.

In the meantime, the Portuguese personnel will be assigned to the Val-d’Or region, approximately 500 kilometers northwest of Montreal, also in Quebec. The firefighters who arrived this Wednesday will join the 109 French people present in Canada since June 8, and in several thousand countries such as the United States, Australia and New Zealand. In the coming days, the arrival of contingents of firefighters from Costa Rica and Chile is expected.

In total, some 5,000 foreign forest firefighters currently operate in Canada. According to figures released Thursday by Canadian authorities, there are currently 470 active fires in the country, despite the fact that rains and falling temperatures have improved weather conditions in recent days. In Quebec, authorities said rain falling in the province until at least Saturday will help control the flames but will not be enough to extinguish any of the 126 active fires.

Meanwhile, in the west of the country, in the province of British Columbia, the Donnie Creek fire, the second largest in the history of the region, has already consumed 4,660 square kilometers of forest since the May 12. Since the start of the year, flames have devastated more than 4.8 million hectares of forest, an area equal to that of Belgium, Luxembourg, Andorra and Malta combined.

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