‘The fires here are unstoppable’

A fire that got out of control advanced quickly toward a logging road on Tuesday afternoon and swept through Canada’s immense — and highly flammable — boreal forest with a force and intensity that was mind-boggling to a team of French firefighters.

Surrounded by thick smoke, a handful went into the woods to search for water. A veteran knelt down and used his right finger to sketch a plan on the gravel road, to attack the fire head-on.

But the commander was not convinced. The fire, he said, was of an immeasurable size unimaginable in France. The conifers with a flammability they had never encountered. Trying to extinguish this small piece would be “futile”.

“We’re not back home,” said the commander, Fabrice Mossé, as a plume of fire shot up from a clump of trees nearby, and as an increasingly nervous Canadian logging supervisor who had led the French to the scene said: “The the fire could be here any minute. We can chat, but let’s do it 20 kilometers away.”

Back at base, Commander Mossé said, “If anyone in New York wonders why there’s smoke, it’s because the fires here are unstoppable.”

“Unstoppable,” he repeated.

A group of 109 French firefighters arrived in northern Quebec about a week ago to assist nearly 1,000 Canadian firefighters and soldiers. , forcing millions of people indoors due to hazardous air quality.

More than 400 wildfires have burned across Canada. But much of the smoke over Manhattan drifted from Quebec, a province unaccustomed to so many massive fires and already experiencing its worst wildfire season on record with more than two months to go.

The French contingent’s experience illustrates the challenges of fighting wildfires in Canada as climate change increases the threats to the boreal forest, the world’s largest intact forest ecosystem and largest terrestrial carbon vault.

Accustomed to attacking much smaller wildfires in France aggressively and quickly, French firefighters must adapt to a land whose scale has left them in awe: Quebec, a province three times the size of France, is ravaged by fires that sometimes a hundred times the size of France. what they are used to confronting.

There was a “fatalism” in fighting fires in Canada, a French commander said: Fighting them often meant burning them, especially in sparsely populated areas, and trying to keep them from spreading.

“It is absolutely impossible for us to keep fires burning,” said General Eric Flores, the leader of the French contingent who hails from the Hérault department in southern France, a region with frequent forest fires. “In my department there is no fire that is not within 10 kilometers of houses and people. If I let it burn, it becomes uncontrollable. That is why we attack fires very quickly.”

Initially deployed in three areas of northern Quebec, the French converged this past week in an area called Obedjiwan – a hotspot about 400 miles north of Montreal by road.

The Battle of Obedjiwan took place in a typical stretch of Canadian boreal forest: it was inhabited by a single community of about 2,000 members of the Atikamekw First Nations on the Obedjiwan Reserve, not far from a critical hydroelectric dam.

Gravel and dirt roads built by a Quebec logging company, Barrette-Chapais, traverse the vast area around Obedjiwan, which is also home to the vast ancestral hunting grounds of the indigenous community.

Until the French arrived, several immense fires north of Obedjiwan had been left alone as Quebec’s wildfire organization focused its efforts on the province’s populated areas, especially its largest city, Chibougamau. As the fires reached within 21 miles of Obedijwan, hundreds of elderly residents, children and others were evacuated to the nearest town, about four hours away by road.

General Flores surveyed the area by helicopter and saw that the fire closest to Obedjiwan was under control, but two larger fires to the north were still raging out of control. Smoke blanketed the forest and hundreds of fire clusters could be seen burning below.

Extensive stretches had burned, some just next to still green areas. Isolated huts of residents of Obedijwan could be seen, some burned down, others still intact but close to the flames. No deaths from wildfires have been reported in Quebec, with damage mainly confined to rural cabins and cottages.

Unable to deal with fires directly as they would have at home, the French took a defensive stance by suppressing cinders in charred areas next to intact areas, in consultation with their liaison with the Quebec wildfire agencyLouis Villeneuve, a veteran of more than two decades.

“It’s the vastness of the boreal forest, the vastness of Canada, and the boreal forest is a fuel,” Mr. Villeneuve said.

Conifers are high in sap, which burns quickly and acts as an accelerator for fast-moving wildfires, shooting flames high into the air that can cross roads and other barriers.

Not far from their base—a logging camp that General Flores had fortified by quickly cutting down trees along its perimeter—dozens of French firefighters traveled in pick-up trucks deep into the woods near a lake. A single hut, belonging to a member of the Obedjiwan community, stood untouched on the edge for now.

A helicopter transported small teams even deeper into the forest and dropped them off at hot points. There, the French tried to put out fires simmering below the surface, dousing the ground with water they pumped from nearby lakes and streams, in an effort to prevent fires from reigniting and spreading to untouched areas.

It was a long game – fending off fires that might come back to life in the coming summer heat.

“We are not used to going to areas that are already on fire,” said Jérôme Schmitt, 37, a French firefighter waiting for the helicopter to pick up his team. “We’re usually going to fight fires, but we adapt.”

The French arrival in Obedjiwan was delayed by half a day after the large fire north of the community suddenly crossed a logging road on Monday afternoon.

A few hours later, 36-year-old Kevin Chachaé, a member of the Obedjiwan community, was driving his pickup truck nearby, not far from his cabin on his ancestors’ hunting grounds.

“I feel helpless, worried and sad at the same time,” Mr Chachaé said, standing next to his truck as the flames burned through the bushes on the side of the road.

Then he continued his drive down a narrow dirt road shrouded in thick, stinging smoke. A mile away, a dozen volunteer firefighters from the Atikamekw group were resting after spending the day fighting fires to save Mr. Chachaé’s cabin.

Some were dressed only in T-shirts, jeans and sneakers, the volunteers had fetched water from nearby creeks, using hoses attached to pumps on three pickup trucks. Only one was a professional, full-time firefighter, and the group consisted of three men fighting fires for the first time.

“I panicked when I saw a big fire over that hill,” says Hubert Petiquay, 31, one of three.

The volunteers said they prevented a fire from spreading to Mr. Chachaé’s cabin, a few miles away. They had extinguished the main fire, sparking smaller fires, nicknamed “la Mère,” or Mother, in French. But they had failed to stop another from crossing the logger’s road—the road that forced the French to take a long detour—and called it “l’échappé,” or the one who escaped.

“For us, we think of the fire as something alive,” says 52-year-old Dave Petiquay.

The day after General Flores arrived in the Obedjiwan area, he made an unannounced visit to the community, which has no mobile coverage and is difficult to reach. He found the leaders holding an emergency meeting at the town hall: Residents were increasingly worried and critical, many from the town council, because of the loss of several huts.

At the request of Jean-Claude Mequish, the head of Obedjiwan, General Flores was quickly interviewed live on the community radio station to provide an assessment of the fires.

“People have no information,” said Chief Mequish, “and everyone wants to go and put out the fires. I am against that. Sending someone without experience is too dangerous.”

Yet Chief Mequish knew what the huts meant: living on the ancestral land of humans, attachment to the life and culture of the forest. All of Obedjiwan shut down for two weeks in the spring and fall, he said, as members went into the forest to reconnect with nature.

“Everything burned down,” said Steven Dubé, 46, in an interview at his kitchen table with his wife, Annick, 45.

With their relatives, they had lost six huts, tents and canoes on their ancestral land. There they picked blueberries, hunted moose and partridges, and fished for walleye and trout.

“We’ll be back there,” he said. “We’re rebuilding in the same place.”