The Royal Canadian Mounted Police said the woman was clearing brush in a remote area where a small fire started. Her team lost contact with her, the police said in a statement, and later found her “caught under a fallen tree.” She died in the hospital.
“Our hearts and thoughts go out to her family and community, both at home and in the B.C. Wildfire Service,” the B.C. General Employees Union said in a statement. Such incidents, it said, “remind us all how dangerous this work can be.” The death will be investigated, the union said.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Friday called the death “heartbreaking.” He tweeted, “At this incredibly difficult time, I’m sending my deepest condolences to her family, her friends, and her fellow firefighters.”
Canada is off to its worst wildfire season in recorded history with several months left to come. More than 4,000 infernos have burned from coast to coast, fueled by drought and hot conditions, and have devoured almost 24 million acres, an area roughly the size of Indiana, and forced a record 155,000 people from their homes.
British Columbia regularly suffers severe blazes. In a bad year, the carbon they emit can exceed that from all forms of fossil fuel use in the province combined. Three of the worst fire seasons in the province have come in the last five years, and summer skies blanketed by a toxic haze of smoke are routine.
But the unusual scale of the recent blazes in Canada, with wildfires raging in at least eight of the 10 provinces and two of the three territories all at once, is placing an unprecedented strain on domestic resources.
A record 3,200 firefighters from 11 countries on six continents have been deployed to Canada this year to help respond to the blazes. Help has come from the United States, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, South Korea, Portugal, France, Spain, Chile, Mexico and Costa Rica.
Canadian officials told The Washington Post in June that the blazes required them to reach out to new international partners. But Bowinn Ma, emergency management and climate readiness minister for British Columbia, said this week that her province needs still more international help. She has asked for 1,000 additional foreign firefighters.
Firefighters from the United States, Portugal and Spain told The Post that they were able to come to Canada in such large numbers this year because their home countries were having a slower start to their wildfire seasons, but they would eventually need to return home.
“It is very, very challenging across Canada and across the globe right now to secure additional firefighting capacity,” Cliff Chapman, a B.C. Wildfire Service spokesman, told reporters on Thursday. “This is a very dangerous job.”
