Sourced this reply to a post by a simple-minded snowflake American complaining about some smoke, feel free to cut and paste at your leisure:
Copied from another poster
Okay. Obviously maybe your understanding of the world outside your own little corner of the world is limited. So let me see if I can explain it to you....
I'll speak about my home province of Manitoba. For the last 5 or so years we have been in drought. In the winter of 2024 and going into 2025 we have record drought. Well below average snow fall, like maybe 1/6th what we normally get. Going into spring when we normally get lots of rain. We got none. The province was tinder dry. A cigarette butt, lightening strike, careless bonfire, hot muffle on a ATV is all that it took to start a raging forest fire.
Manitoba burned last year. Worst forest fire season on record. There were concerns that even over winter these forest fires would continue to burn under ground in peat. Call zombie fires. I knew all too well. A fire broke out close to my family cabin. I raced from work and was awake for three days straight fighting the fire. I got zero sleep. We don't have running water on the property. Myself, neighbors, friends ended up using water from a ditch to handbomb water in buckets to fight the fire. 72 hours, no rest. Through luck, the grace of God, friends and family we fought the fire and won.
Fire came as close as 5 feet from burning my neighbours cabin and 30 yards from mine. We nearly lost the cabin three seperate times. We were the lucky ones. Others, lost their lives or their homes or cabins. These fires were province wide. We had fire fighters as far as Australia come to help.
Then you get some ignorant fools on Facebook complaining about the smoke in the air. And saying ignorant things like
- "Why doesn't Canada do something about it"
- "Canada is ruining my summer with their forest fires"
- "Canada doesn't manage their forests properly"
- "Why doesn't Canada cut fire lines to fight the fires"
- "Why doesn't Canada put out the fires"
And so on and so forth...
All incredibly stupid comments coming from people that clearly have no clue.
A lot of these fires are burning in Canada's boreal forest. This region is larger than your entire country. It's where the US gets all its lumber from. This isnt your little small state parks where everything is mircomanaged. This is a huge unbroken forest of pure wilderness. There is very little infrastructure, such as roads, towns, airports. It is pure unbroken wilderness. Where the closest road could be 100 miles away.
Why don't we cut firelines? The boreal forest is bigger than the US, do you have any idea how unrealistic that would be?! The boreal forest has millions of lakes, marshes, swamps, and rivers. Not mention mountains, hills, and valleys. What could would a firelines be if you can even take a vehicle down it because it would sink into a swamp?
Canada has for the last few years recieved less snow and rainfall than normal. We have been in drought conditions. (Manitoba this year is now flooding because of the unprecedented high rainfall we received this summer). There were hundreds of fires burning in Canada. Resources like fire fighting equipment like plans, helicopters trucks, firetrucks, as well as firefighters. The area is simply too big. If you have a fire that is burning 100 miles in the bush and there are no roads allowing you to get close, what do you do? Fly one helicopter in 100miles to dump bucket of water of the fire, to put out 0.0001% of the fire?!
Another scenario for you. There is a fire that is threating an entire town, it's people, and everything they hold dear, their entire lives are at stake. There is also a forest fire burning 20 miles away in the middle of the forest that is not threating anyone or any town.
Which do you prioritize? You can only put your limited resources to one fire.
I was faced with this in 2025 when that fire threatened my cabin. Do I run through the bush putting out every fire I see, and maybe loose the property my family has held for over 100 years. Or do fight to save my cabin and the property?
This is what Canada faced. It's impossible to deploy enough forces to put out every fire. The prioritize the ones that have the highest threat. Would you want it any other way, put yourself in our shoes. Would you want firefights to pull up and leave your home to burn to the ground because a few trees down the road were on fire and your neighbor further down the road is complain that fire is making his yard smokey?
So....when some "individual" comes on here and complains that Canada isn't doing a good enough job fighting fires. Their summer is absolutely ruined because of some smoky air (boo hoo!), or criticizes littlerly a world wide of fire fighters effort to battle these fire all the while putting their lives at risk. It screams of arrogance, ignorance, utter stupidly, and lack of understanding of the world outside their little isolated bubble in which they live.
