OTTAWA: The Canadian province of Quebec says rain and outside help could help win the fight against more than 100 forest fires producing plumes of smoke that have left cities on the Atlantic seaboard gasping for breath.
Officials say that by Monday (Jun 12) there will be around 1,200 fire fighters, including more than 100 from France, battling blazes across a heavily wooded province of just 8.5 million people that covers more territory than Germany, Spain and France combined.
"Some rain is forecast ... in the next few days there is a risk the situation will stay critical. But the arrival of French firefighters is really going to help," forestry minister Maite Blanchette Vezina told reporters on Friday.
By late Friday there were 422 fires across Canada, 125 of them in Quebec. Canadian forest fires regularly occur in the warmer summer months but the scope of the current conflagration - and its early arrival - is unprecedented.
Federal meteorologist Gerald Cheng told reporters on Friday that some precipitation was expected over the weekend in Quebec, but added "whether or not that rain ... is enough to douse the fires, that remains to be seen".