As the haze from the Canadian wildfires clears here in the United States, the ongoing weather event continues to have a lingering effect on Canadian infrastructure where industry leaders are taking precautionary measures to reduce further devastation.
Canadian National Railway is taking steps to protect infrastructure from wildfires by installing sprinklers and pumps on certain bridges. They are even going as far as evacuating some equipment from affected areas. One analyst expects the impact on volumes to be small, maybe just one train a day and mainly for forest products.
USDA Meteorologist Brad Rippey provided an update on the current fire conditions Thursday.
“We’re seeing fires flaring again, and smoke and air quality dropping across the Canadian prairies,” Rippey said. “Some of that smoke and haze working its way into the North-Central United States and being wrapped southward around a low-pressure system that is over the Great Lakes region. We do see some declining and reduced air quality now across the Northern Plains and Upper Midwest.”
As of Thursday, the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Center reports 453 active fires in the country.
