Wildfire

Canada’s air pollution levels last year were worse than those in the United States for the first time since an air quality firm in Switzerland started publishing its assessments in 2018. The sixth World Air Quality report published Tuesday by Goldach, Switzerland-based IQAir says raging wildfires were a major influence on Canada’s drop in air quality in 2023, The Canadian Press reports. While the report found Canada on average still has some of the least polluted air, public health experts have repeatedly warned about the health dangers of more intense wildfire seasons, fuelled by human-caused climate change. “Air pollution is a silent killer,” said Dr. Samantha Green, a family physician with Unity Health Toronto and associate professor at the University of Toronto who was not involved with the report. “It’s a problem that I think we’re not used to thinking about, but that we need to be thinking about more.R...

A wildfire in the Nantahala National Forest continues to burn without any containment over a week after a lightning strike first sparked it Oct. 23, officials say. A total of 55 personnel from the U.S. Forest Service and North Carolina Forest Service are working the fire, which burns at 90 acres as of Oct. 31, according to a U.S. Forest Service news release. The fire has been mostly growing to the west and northwest toward Flat Branch and Collett Creek. There has been no containment due to “rugged terrain and limited accessibility,” the U.S. Forest Service said in a social media post. On Oct. 29, fire behavior “remained minimal with some smoldering and creeping,” the Oct. 30 news release said. Due to dry fuels on the floor such as leaves, smoke was visible from U.S. 74. A cold front arrived over the fire Oct. 30, “bringing partly cloudy skies, low temperatures, precipitation, and higher humidity, which will decrease fire behav...