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Atlantic Canada feeling the heat

Contact us Email: letters@theguardian.pe.ca Website: saltwire.com/opinion Post: The Guardian, Letters to the Editor Box 760, Charlottetown PE C1A 7L8

Heat waves have been rippling across the Atlantic region, but it’s not all hot fun in the summertime.

In Nova Scotia, a fire ban is in effect across the entire province and areas like Cape Breton Regional Municipality are recognizing that they aren’t prepared for extreme heat and the toll it can take.

Many houses and buildings across Atlantic Canada aren’t air-conditioned, including long-term care homes, which leaves older citizens prone to heat exhaustion. Many towns don’t have cooling centres.

New Brunswick has also been feeling the heat, with high humidity making it feel like 40 degrees Celsius on some days.

The scarcity of rain has left parks and lawns burnt, with sparse brown grass that crackles underfoot.

Farmers in P.E.I. have lost crops to the heat and lack of rain and have had to hose down livestock in some cases.

“Dry spells are not uncommon, but there seems to be a change in the climate in recent years,” Souris, P.E.I. farmer Crystal Burke told Saltwire recently after her annual flower festival had to be postponed for lack of precipitation.

In Newfoundland and Labrador, forest fires consuming more than more than 160 kilometres of land in the central part of the island have triggered a state of emergency, and is killing and displacing wildlife. It’s the worst wildfires the province has seen since 1961, when careless smoking was thought to be the cause. This time, lightning strikes in a tinderbox landscape started the inferno, which has had sweeping ramifications.

Rain on Tuesday was heartily welcomed, but will it be enough to help firefighters gain the advantage?

Meanwhile, a vital transportation route has been cut off by the fires, trapping people in their communities with dwindling food and fuel. The government is sending helicopters in with essential supplies.

Some people are waiting on tenterhooks for the call to evacuate, leaving homes and precious belongings behind, while others are coping with heavy smoke.

Non-urgent surgeries and other medical procedures in St. John’s have been cancelled as hospitals make room for acute care patients transferred from the central region, and some long-term care residents in the area of the fires have had to be relocated to the western part of the province.

It’s a stark lesson in the realities of climate change: with higher temperatures and changing weather patterns, one dropped cigarette or a lightning strike in a dry patch is all that’s needed to set off a domino effect of repercussions that can be felt throughout a region, putting lives — both human and animal — property and vital infrastructure on the line.

If this summer doesn’t serve as a wakeup call to decision-makers to reduce fire risks, nothing will.

We are spending too much time and resources being reactive to climate change, rather than being proactive and trying to prevent disasters before they occur.

Climate change must burn itself into our political consciousness if we have any hope of confronting it in time.

If this summer doesn’t serve as a wakeup call to decision-makers to reduce fire risks, nothing will. We are spending too much time and resources being reactive to climate change, rather than being proactive and trying to prevent disasters before they occur.

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2022-08-10T07:00:00.0000000Z

2022-08-10T07:00:00.0000000Z

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