More than 200 wildfires remained out of control yesterday, Friday, in Canada, particularly in the province of Ontario, with millions of residents in the northeastern U.S. breathing in the smoke.
According to the latest data from the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Coordination Center (CIFFC), 206 fires remained out of control out of a total of 896 active fires. Seventy new fires broke out during the day.
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The current wildfire season is considered, at this stage, less severe in Canada than in 2023, a year of tragic records, but their intensity has increased over the past week.
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More than 830 wildfires remain active in Canada. The smoke is already affecting New York and New Jersey, the sites of Sunday’s final between Spain and Argentina. Concerns are growing over high pollution
levels @MundoEConflicto / @albertolati pic.twitter.com/QAfA2wghaF
Advertisement— Manuel Lopez San Martin (@MLopezSanMartin) July 16, 2026
Nearly 28 million stremmata have been burned so far in 2026, according to the latest data from the Canadian federal government. Just last Friday, that figure was closer to 16 million stremmata.
The situation is considered particularly critical in Ontario (in the east), where more than 80 fires remained out of control, Doug Ford, the premier of the provincial government, clarified to the press yesterday.
Canada
Just watched an incredible sight — 5 Canadian water bombers flying in perfect formation, diving down one after another to scoop water from the lake. The pride I felt in that moment was overwhelming.
To every pilot, crew member, and firefighter out there… pic.twitter.com/ho6sF212c0
— Conner Harley McDavidsonTM
(@ConHarMcD) July 18, 2026
Ontario requested assistance from the federal government on Thursday. Firefighters from other provinces, including Alberta and Yukon, have been dispatched to the province.
More than 80 firefighting aircraft and helicopters have been deployed to Ontario to assist in the firefighting effort.
“Everything turned to ash”
Another 39 aircraft are ready to head to isolated areas, inaccessible by land, to urgently evacuate residents of communities, primarily Indigenous people, Doug Ford added.
Citing a lack of coordination on the part of the authorities, some communities have organized the emergency evacuation of their residents themselves in recent days, particularly Collins, about 200 kilometers north of Thunder Bay, Ontario.
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A TikTok video presents a July 6 prophecy by Perez Ndi about uncontrollable Canadian wildfires lasting for weeks, followed by actual footage from July 2026 showing intense blazes (Lake Tamarack, Ontario train… pic.twitter.com/kUPEjiSVtg
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🅹🆇🆇 (@Jaxx_3000) July 18, 2026
“Community members made the decision to evacuate urgently on Monday night, without any government support,” said Linda Debasitz, the community’s Indigenous leader.
They took boats, as shown in videos circulating on social media and some broadcast by local media, then crossed a forest road surrounded by flames. The approximately 30 residents say that now, in their village, “everything has turned to ashes.”
“Many memories have gone up in smoke; we’ve lost our history,” added the community leader, noting that she had to return to the village by boat “to search for two people whose whereabouts were unknown.”
The wildfires in Ontario have not caused any deaths so far, as far as is known. Residents of communities that had to be evacuated urgently have sought refuge in cities such as Thunder Bay, Toronto, and others, said Premier Ford, without providing a specific number, assuring that the authorities are “supporting” those affected by the fires.
The smoke from these fires, carried by the winds, is causing a drastic deterioration in air quality in the Toronto metropolitan area —Canada’s most densely populated city—and in the northeastern United States.
According to data compiled by the Swiss company IQAir, cities in the Detroit area, such as Chicago, and the U.S. federal capital, Washington, D.C., were among those with the worst air pollution on the planet around 12:30 a.m. today (Cyprus time).
Canadian meteorological services warned that air quality in Toronto, which had shown “improvement” yesterday morning, “will be very poor again” tonight and likely over the weekend.
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