[Train crew surrounded by flames near Armstrong, Ontario]
Mike Flannigan (interview): “We’ve seen three very active fire years in Canada, and now 2026 will be the fourth.”
[East River and Brooklyn skyline covered in haze]
Mike Flannigan (interview): “We had hot, dry, windy weather, we had a number of lightning ignitions, and then it exploded at a rapid growth of fire in Quebec, northwestern Ontario, northwest territories, more recently in British Columbia. Thousands of people evacuated, hundreds of homes lost, and of course large smoke plumes that have affected people in the United States. And Europe as smoke travels long distances.”
[Pedestrians wearing masks walking on sidewalks]
Jonathan Boucher (interview): “The conditions that we saw in, in Ontario, about the seven days maximum that we saw in terms of daily severity, are twice as likely now that they were in a pre-industrial climate.”
[Coal-fired Gavin Power Plant]
Jonathan Boucher (interview): “Greenhouse gas emission is leading to increase temperature globally. Different areas are being affected differently. This is changing the climate, and all the systems are developing the weather systems are developing so and this is introducing lots of variability to extents that we have not seen in our lifespan and in the data that we have.”
[Smoke over the Philadelphia skyline]
Jonathan Boucher (interview): “What is going on is being driven by climate change.”
Donald Trump (interview): “They’re not managing their forests properly. And the wind has a tendency to blow right over New York City, right over, you saw Detroit, they had to close the whole place. Michigan was really affected. They had to close businesses for four days. It’s very serious what they’re doing, and they don’t seem to be able to do anything about it. If they managed their forests, they wouldn’t have the fires.”
Jonathan Boucher (interview): “However the forest is managed, the drought is making most of the fuel available, so if there’s an ignition, any fuel or most fuel would tend to burn in those extreme conditions. So what we’re facing here is more of a climate-related problem than a forest management problem.”
[Smoke covering buildings and the East River]
[Residents walking on a sidewalk]
[Cars passing by]
Jonathan Boucher (interview): “We should expect seeing that happening more often and that more communities were gonna be affected.”
[A vast group of pedestrians]
[Smoke covering a building and a bridge]
Jonathan Boucher (interview): “We need to achieve more risk assessment study to better understand where is the risk and at what scale, and use that to better weigh in the different mitigation measures that we could implement.”
[People handing out face masks]
[Sun obscured by smoke]
This script was provided by The Associated Press.