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Winnipeg Free Press

Experts warn Manitobans will have to get used to a fiery future

On the afternoon of May 12, Larry and Leta Lee packed their grab-and-go bags and drove the 25 kilometres from their home, nestled in the boreal forest around Flanders Lake, to the junction with the sole gravel highway in and out of Manitoba's Nopiming Provincial Park. They'd seen smoke rising on the horizon and knew wildfires were encroaching from the north, west and southeast. The nearest fire had already grown to more than 500 square kilometres and burned through swaths of the park. And it was uncharacteristically hot — temperatures climbed to over 30 C across the province. 'We wanted to know if it was a danger and if we should be evacuating,' Larry Lee said in a recent phone interview. Their fears would soon be realized. The spring fires spreading across eastern and northern Manitoba are among the most devastating the province has seen in decades. More than 100 fires have consumed nearly 4,000 square kilometres of forest, an area approaching 10 times the size of Winnipeg. The 20-year average for this time of year is about 75 fires and 250 square kilometres burned, according to the National Forestry Database. SUPPLIED Two people — Richard and Sue Nowell — died in the Wendigo Road blaze near Lac du Bonnet, south of Nopiming. They were the first civilian wildfire deaths in Manitoba's recent history. The province declared a state of emergency late Wednesday as wildfires intensified across the north; the federal government plans to send military support. In a press conference Wednesday, Premier Wab Kinew called the situation 'very, very serious,' especially as large fires spread across several parts of the province simultaneously. '(Normally) you would have one region having a challenge at a given time … this year, it's all the regions at the same time,' Kinew told reporters. There had been warning signs in the weeks preceding the fires: a lack of spring rain, backcountry fire bans and an uncharacteristic May heat wave. A few weeks ago, Lee says, 'it seemed to totally dry up.' They eventually returned home, having been told by a passing police officer their area wasn't on the evacuation list yet. That call came early the next morning. They would need to be out within the hour. At least 80 vehicles gathered at Nopiming Lodge, Lee says, and with the help of RCMP and provincial staff, they filed onto the narrow gravel road and made their way south through the path of the fire and out of the park. The Lees have been living out of a hotel in Beausejour ever since. 'We were down, at times, to four or five metres of visibility between one vehicle and another, and the flames were on both sides of the road in places,' Lee recalls. The blaze had already passed through, leaving small fires along the road in its wake. 'We didn't stop.… We just kept moving.' The Lees have lived year-round in the cottage community at Flanders Lake since 2008. There have been fires in past years — it's not the first time they've had go-bags at the ready — but it's the first time they've had to leave their tranquil lakeside home behind. SUPPLIED The Nopiming fire remains out of control and continues to grow, now encompassing more than 1,200 square kilometres. Thousands of people have been evacuated from communities across the western, eastern and northern regions, including more than 17,000 evacuees from Flin Flon, Lynn Lake, Pimicikamak and Mathias Colomb First Nations. It's believed to be the largest evacuation since 1997's Flood of the Century, which forced about 25,000 people from their homes throughout the Red River Valley. 'This will be the largest evacuation Manitoba will have seen in most people's living memory,' Kinew said late Wednesday. For wildland fire expert Mike Flannigan, it's a troubling sign of things to come. 'It's going to be a very active fire season in Manitoba,' he says. Manitoba has been comparatively unscathed in recent years as parts of the country, especially western provinces, have battled hotter, larger and more frequent fires: the blaze that levelled Jasper, Alta., in 2024; the tragic Lytton, B.C., fire in 2021; Fort McMurray in 2016 and Canada's most destructive wildfire season on record in 2023, which burned more than 150,000 square kilometres. This time around, Manitoba and northwest Ontario are so far at the epicentre of the crisis — and experts says it may be a bellwether of summers to come. 'The future is hot and smoky,' Flannigan says in an interview. 'We're going to have to learn to live with fire.' Flannigan is speaking from Kamloops, B.C., where he teaches wildfire science at Thompson Rivers University. He's looking at an array of screens: a looping image from a fixed satellite 35,000 kilometres above the Earth showing smoke billowing from the fires, another satellite view with infrared bands showing hot spots, provincial fire information dashboards and weather reports for the coming days. 'Once the snow melts I monitor fires all across Canada and the United States and around the world,' he says. Right away, he mentions this summer is poised to be a challenging one for Manitoba. Looking at upcoming weather, the former Environment Canada meteorologist warns the last week of May could make the already devastating situation worse. 'An upper ridge is coming, it looks like it's going to hang around for a while, and when that happens it often means lots of fire,' Flannigan says, referring to an arc in the jet stream that pushes warm, dry, high-pressure air northward. 'You need three ingredients for a wildfire, it's a simple recipe,' he explains. The first is dry vegetation, what Flannigan and other 'fire people' call fuel. There's a spring window after the snow melts and before new vegetation grows that's particularly fire-prone since the ground is covered in dry, dead brush from the previous fall. The next ingredient is ignition, a spark caused either by lightning or human activity. The split of natural and human-caused fires averages about 50-50 across Canada, Flannigan says, though lightning fires tend to be larger and responsible for the vast majority of wildfire damage. Fires during the spring window tend to be caused by human activity like campfire embers, cigarette butts or sparks from machinery or electrical wires, while late-summer fires are predominantly caused by lightning storms. Finally, fire needs hot, dry, windy weather to spread. In southern Manitoba, the Lees noticed the unusually dry weather early in the spring. 'No matter where you walked or went in the yard or the trails, the grass was crunchy under your feet,' Lee says. 'That made me know that it was dangerous.' DAVID LIPNOWSKI / FREE PRESS According to the Canadian Drought Monitor, about 40 per cent of the Prairies — including much of south and central Manitoba — experienced abnormally dry and moderate drought conditions through April. Then, already above-average temperatures spiked into a record-breaking May heat weave, with the mercury reaching 38 C in parts of the province, mid-month. The heat was accompanied by wind gusts above 50 km/h — textbook conditions for wildfires. In a social media post on May 13 — the same day the Lees evacuated Nopiming park — Flannigan shared satellite imagery showing smoke trailing across Manitoba, northwestern Ontario and parts of Minnesota, describing the conditions as an example of a 'fire-spread day.' Looking ahead to a week of hot and dry temperatures thanks to the upper ridge, he expects more of those days to come. 'We're seeing more of these episodes. Unfortunately as our climate changes, we're going to expect more,' Flannigan says. 'The bottom line here is that a warmer world means more fire.' Fires aren't unusual in Manitoba. The province has averaged more than 400 fires and 2,500 square kilometres burned annually over the last 20 years. As in much of Canada, these fires tend to happen in the forested northern regions, where Indigenous communities are disproportionately impacted. More than 40 per cent of wildfire evacuations in Canada between 1980 and 2021 were in predominantly Indigenous communities. Of the 16 communities in Canada that have been evacuated five or more times in that period, 14 are First Nations. Large, uncontrolled fires in the south are less familiar. This year, the first fires appeared east of Lake Winnipeg, near popular hiking, camping and fishing sites about 100 kilometres north of Winnipeg, in mid-April. More fires quickly spread through the Interlake region and up the western border; residents of The Pas and nearby communities were evacuated as a fire grew out of control in early May. Another sparked near Lac Du Bonnet, prompting strict fire and travel bans in the southeast and Interlake regions of the province — including some of the most popular provincial parks. The province declared a state of local emergency in Nopiming and surrounding parks on May 13 and asked residents, cottagers, campers and park staff to evacuate. Whiteshell park was closed and evacuated the next day. The fire in Nopiming is now more than 1,200-square-kilometres in size. Over the last 20 years, the average area burned by all fires in May is approximately 250 square kilometres. MIKAELA MACKENZIE / FREE PRESS Flannigan says the Whiteshell region was 'long overdue' for a fire. Forest fires are, after all, a normal part of the life cycle of a forest and 'much of Canada is what we call a flammable landscape,' he adds. But Flannigan and his colleagues have noticed a worrying trend: the area burned by wildfires across Canada every year has quadrupled since the 1970s. Fires are getting hotter, larger and more frequent. 'My colleagues and I attribute this largely — not solely — to human-caused climate change,' Flannigan says. 'We're seeing more extreme fire weather and thus we're seeing more fire activity, more catastrophic fires.' Danny Blair, co-director of the Prairie Climate Centre in Winnipeg, explains climate change is causing warmer temperatures across Canada, and particularly on the Prairies. The number of days with temperatures over 30 C is expected to more than double across much of southern Manitoba by 2050. Warm and dry winters, like this year's, are projected to be more common, too. 'Warmer temperatures are the aspect of climate change that we're most confident about,' Blair says. 'There's no doubt … the winters are getting shorter, the warm season is getting longer and that just has to translate to greater wildfire risk.' A warmer climate creates 'the perfect storm' of wildfire conditions, Blair says. The heat speeds up evaporation and transpiration, which dries out vegetation and leaves more fire fuel on the ground. Hot temperatures also produce more lightning storms, meaning more sources of ignition. With more of all three wildfire ingredients, Blair says​: 'I don't think there could be any doubt that the wildfire risk is being exacerbated by climate change.' The effects may be cyclical, too. 'When we have a really bad wildfire season, huge amounts of carbon dioxide are added to the atmosphere,' Blair says. If the forest is able to regenerate as normal, this carbon is eventually reabsorbed by plant life. But if the fire cycle gets shorter, and a forest burns more frequently than normal and is unable to get back to its original state, 'it will never get back to storing the same amount of carbon,' Blair explains. 'This spring is just a sign of the times that are coming,' he says. 'It's only going to get worse.' In recognition of this reality, experts like Blair and Flannigan stress it will be important for Canadians to implement measures that make it easier and safer to live with fire. Flanders Lake is off the beaten path. There are about 45 cottages, five of which are occupied year-round, centred around the long, narrow lake near the Ontario border. The lake is relatively shallow, and high-powered boat motors are banned, so it's usually quiet and dotted with pontoons. 'That's what attracted us to it,' Lee says. 'In order to have that kind of quietness, it translates into not that many people going camping in the area.' As a result, the Lees have become accustomed to living as though they're on their own. 'We are always adapting and ready to adapt to the circumstances,' he says. 'We're keeping our mind open to the fact that we will have, with climate change, more of these issues and we have to adapt our lifestyle to it.' Normally, Lee would clean up the deadwood around his property and burn the smaller pieces in his firepit. When he noticed the dry spring, he opted against any fires. When the province eventually banned campfires and motorized vehicles in the backcountry, he hung a sign across the nearest trailhead to remind visitors of the risks. To experts like Flannigan, these kinds of anticipatory steps are an important part of learning to live with the new realities of wildfires. 'We spend a lot of money fighting fire; perhaps it's time to think about how we do things differently,' he says. 'Prevention and mitigation is where we should be spending more money.' That can look like fire bans and forest closures in high-risk areas to avoid human-caused fires, even though these measures can be unpopular. There are also Fire Smart principles that jurisdictions can implement as a matter of policy, like using non-flammable building materials and creating a 1.5-metre buffer zone around homes and buildings that is cleared of flammable materials. It can also involve calling in reinforcements early, Flannigan says. Many Canadian fire services share resources — be it personnel, water bombers or other equipment — when local crews are overwhelmed. But these resources take time to arrive, and fires can worsen in the interim. MANITOBA GOVERNMENT Manitoba has already received more than 100 firefighters, an air-tanker and 500 sprinklers from Alberta, B.C. and Parks Canada this month. On Wednesday, the province said it was awaiting another 52 crew members from B.C., New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island. Flannigan believes co-ordinated emergency management across borders and early requests for support could help get fires under control sooner. 'Fire is a multifaceted issue and you need multi-pronged solutions,' he says. 'There's no silver bullet. It's going to take a lot of work and money to be able to better live with fire.' Back at his temporary quarters in Beausejour, Lee has been checking satellite images to see where the fire is and whether his home is still safe. He worries about his freezers full of food after the fire caused a multi-day power outage. He worries the wind will turn in the coming days and blow the flames back toward the unscathed pockets around Flanders Lake. As the smoke clears around Lac Du Bonnet, he hopes the province's fire crews will be able to pivot in time. Julia-Simone RutgersReporter Julia-Simone Rutgers is the Manitoba environment reporter for the Free Press and The Narwhal. She joined the Free Press in 2020, after completing a journalism degree at the University of King's College in Halifax, and took on the environment beat in 2022. Read more about Julia-Simone. Julia-Simone's role is part of a partnership with The Narwhal, funded by the Winnipeg Foundation. Every piece of reporting Julia-Simone produces is reviewed by an editing team before it is posted online or published in print — part of the Free Press's tradition, since 1872, of producing reliable independent journalism. Read more about Free Press's history and mandate, and learn how our newsroom operates. Our newsroom depends on a growing audience of readers to power our journalism. If you are not a paid reader, please consider becoming a subscriber. 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