Alberta is experiencing an unusually intense fire season this year with more than 400 wildfires burning about 400,000 hectares since January. This has led to some claims that the fires are being deliberately set by people who are trying to influence Alberta's coming general election on May 29. This is false. There is no evidence of a political motivation behind the blazes, and the Alberta government says hot and dry conditions in most areas of the province are resulting in wildfires.
A Reddit user on the Alberta Reddit page regarding comments they had seen under posts by official accounts providing fire updates. The post said that some people in the community are making unfounded claims, including that the fires are part of an NDP campaign strategy, an "authoritarian land grab" or they are meant to push people into cities. The user also of the comments from Facebook.
Another example of this can be found on Parkland County's Twitter account. On May 3 it to report any suspicious behaviour to RCMP after it had responded to four fires that appeared to be intentionally set. Comments responding to the post claim (, 听补苍诲 ) that it was the NDP or . A spokesperson for Parkland County told 好色tvon Tuesday that the cause of the four fires remain under investigation.
Rating: False
At a press conference on Saturday, government officials were whether the fires were deliberately set because they appear to be around a lot of oil towns.
Alberta Premier Danielle Smith responded by saying that natural fires typically occur through lightning storms. She said the vast majority of these fires are caused by humans, possibly by vehicles on a highway, campfires, a cigarette being thrown out the window, carelessness or sparks.
Christie Tucker, information unit manager with Alberta Wildfire, agreed.
"The majority of wildfires in Alberta are unfortunately caused by human activity. That doesn't mean they're all deliberately set. The majority of them are inadvertently caused by recreational activity, or burning that goes out of control," Tucker said.
Fuelling the fire
As of Thursday morning, 426 wildfires for the year had burned about 443,000 hectares. Last year at this time, 189 fires had burned 422 hectares.
Tucker said at a last week that warm weather and strong winds have caused very active wildfires in the province.
For example, on May 4, there were 34 heat records broken across Alberta, , with temperatures reaching 32.5 C.
Alberta continues to investigate the cause of these fires. 201 wildfires were caused by humans, 17 wildfires were caused by lightning and 208 wildfires remain under investigation as of Thursday morning.
Arson-related wildfires
While most wildfires in the province are inadvertently started by humans, a small amount are deemed to be caused by arson.
The Wildfire Management Branch with the Alberta government told 好色tvthat in 2022 out of 1,246 wildfires 64 were determined to be caused by arson.
"We investigate every wildfire in Alberta to determine the cause and origin," said Melissa Story, a spokeswoman for the branch.
"This helps us keep track of main causes, emerging trends and how we can ensure prevention methods are up to date."
Sources
The Reddit post can be found ()
The Reddit user's of Facebook posts ()
Claims on Twitter that wildfires are politically motivated can be found (), () and ()
Claims that environmental activists are behind the wildfires can be found (), (), () and ()
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