Canada considering options for national emergency response agency: Sajjan

A new national emergency response agency may consist of regional response teams that Ottawa can call into action when disaster strikes, Emergency Preparedness Minister Harjit Sajjan said in a recent interview.

It is clear some kind of federal co-ordination agency is required, Sajjan said, speaking to The Canadian Press about the lessons learned after last summer’s record-breaking wildfire season.

But it’s not yet clear exactly what that will look like, he said.

In the last three summers, Canada has seen record temperatures, severe droughts, massive flooding, hurricanes and, in 2023, the worst wildfire season ever.

Since the beginning of the year, more than 18.5 million hectares – or 185,000 square kilometres – of land burned.

That is nearly 2.5 times more than the previous record of 7.6 million hectares set in 1989, and more than nine times the average area burned annually over the last 25 years.

Every region of Canada felt it, with tens of thousands of people evacuated and several thousand homes and other structures destroyed. Poor air quality warnings forced people indoors for days, if not weeks, at a time.

With many regions seeing lower-than-usual precipitation this fall, the conditions are shaping up for high risk of another bad fire season next summer. |Read more https://globalnews.ca/news/10172535/canada-emergency-response-agency-sajjan/ | globalnews.ca/news/10172535/ca…

#cdnpoli #emergency #storms #environment #hurricanes #floods #wildfires #response