Toronto (Canada), July 6 (EFE).- The high consumption of electricity in the middle of a heat wave with temperatures equivalent to 40 degrees Celsius caused the power cuts of hundreds of thousands of people in Montreal (Canada), warned this Thursday the company Hydro-Quebec.

The company that supplies electricity to the province of Quebec said in a statement that the power outages occurred when a safety mechanism was activated on one of its high voltage lines.

Much of Canada has been experiencing an extreme heat wave for three days, affecting major cities across the country.

In Montreal, the second largest city in the country, the combination of temperature and humidity is causing a thermal sensation of 40 degrees this Thursday.

In Toronto, the country’s largest city, the Canadian Meteorological Service warned that the thermometer would reach 30 degrees this Thursday but, with the humidity, the thermal sensation would be 37 degrees.

Similar conditions are occurring, for the third day in a row, in large areas of the provinces of Quebec and Ontario, the most populous in the country.

And on the Canadian Pacific coast, the province of British Columbia has temperatures between 30 and 35 degrees Celsius.

Even in the arctic regions, the temperatures are stifling. In Inuvik, a community in Canada’s Northwest Territories near the Beaufort Sea, the thermometer hit 33 degrees, the highest since temperatures began being recorded in 1957.

The weather service expects temperatures to moderate from Friday.

The Canadian government has said climate change is responsible for the high temperatures as well as the historic wave of wildfires the country is experiencing this year.

Canadian authorities said Thursday that so far this year the fire has burned 88,000 square kilometers of forest, a record 11 times the average for the past decade.

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As of Thursday, Natural Resources Canada had counted 666 active wildfires across the country, double the number in early June.

Canadian authorities have also warned that the scale of some of the fires, such as Donny Creek in the province of British Columbia, will keep them active until the end of the year.

An additional problem is the smoke generated by wildfires in Canada, which has caused problems in large areas of Canada, the United States and even Europe.

This Thursday, Canada’s medical director, Dr Theresa Tam, warned that the smoke that blankets cities like Toronto or Montreal this year is dangerous to people’s health, especially for people with respiratory or heart problems.

Tam recommended people who must be outdoors wear masks with filters when smoke from the fires reduces air quality.

(c) EFE Agency