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Canadian Fires
Carla Turner, for CBC News Online
It happens every year. If it's spring in Canada, it's the beginning of forest-fire season. Just as the southern coastal states deal with hurricanes, and the U.S. plains contend with tornadoes, Canada copes with flooding and fights fires.
It usually starts as early as April, with grass fires that scorch the landscape. Then the season moves into high gear with the first round of forest fires in May and June, with more to come in the summer drought months. By the time it's all over in September, 2,000 square kilometres will have burned in roughly 9,500 fires across the country. 
For those six months of the year, an entire industry comes alive. Provincial governments and Parks Canada hire and train hundreds of firefighters who spend the summer doing the annual battle with fire.
They will spend long, hard hours fighting a stubborn blaze that will only get worse because of high winds. They will be transported to other provinces to reinforce firefighters worn down by a blaze that won't be controlled. Many are college and university students who need a job. Others are highly trained firefighters who have gone to school to learn the intricacies of fire behaviour and suppression.
The fire fight doesn't just happen on the ground. We have become experts in battling blazes from the air with helicopters, rappel crews, water tankers and even satellite monitoring systems.
We do a lot to protect our forests, and we spend a great deal of money doing it. Millions of dollars every year go into managing and protecting the trees. And with good reason: Canada is the world's largest exporter of wood and paper products with 10 per cent of the world's forests. Forestry employed 352,000 people in 1999, more Canadians than any other industry, earning a total of $11.8 billion. More than 300 communities across Canada depend on forestry. It is key to the economy of many provinces, including British Columbia, New Brunswick and Ontario.
We are a forest nation. Two-fifths of Canada is covered with trees. Part of that is the boreal forest, a belt that exists in northern climates and is made up predominantly of coniferous trees such as pine, spruce, hemlock and cedar. However, deciduous forest, which includes maple, oak, birch and elm, can be found in parts of Southern Ontario.
It is not surprising, then, that we spend a great deal of time and energy protecting our forests. We are always looking to improve logging practices and upgrade tree-planting techniques, and forest-fire detection and prevention.
Most fires are caused by humans: 58 per cent of the wildfires that consume our forests and grasslands every year are caused by carelessness and could have been prevented. The rest, 42 per cent, are caused by lightning. We try to prevent them. We fight them. Sometimes we are defeated by them. But we will likely never stop them: As long as there is fire, there will be forest fires.
Laaste update grote etc van de brandhaarden:
http://www.nrcan-rncan.gc.ca/cfs-scf/science/prodserv/firereport/firereport_e.html
