People in Lake Country, British Columbia, watch as the Quilpituk Creek wildfire burns on the mountainside across Okanagan Lake, near Fintry, Monday, Aug. 3. AP-Yonhap
MONTREAL, Canada — Faced with another summer when wildfires have scorched millions of hectares of land and blankets of smoke have disrupted daily life nationwide, Canada is trying to limit the annual devastation.
Yet, despite procuring new water bombers and deploying forest management strategies to protect populated areas, experts caution that intense wildfires will remain a fixture of Canadian life.
"We're going to have to live with this," said Normand Lacour, who spent decades at Quebec's wildfire prevention and detection organization (SOPFEU).
Canada is home to about a quarter of Earth's boreal forest area and average annual temperatures in the country are increasing roughly twice as fast as the global average.
