Recent Canadian wildfires are record-breaking – and will threaten US air quality for days

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By Eric Holthaus, The Guardian. 

Excerpt: Enormous early-season wildfires have erupted across the prairie provinces of Canada this week, taxing local emergency response and threatening a long stretch of dangerous air quality across eastern North America. The country’s largest fires – the Bird River fire and the Border fire – remain completely uncontained in northern Manitoba. In Manitoba alone, wildfires have burned about 200,000 hectares already this year – already about three times the recent full-year average for the province. More than 17,000 people are in the process of being airlifted out of wildfire zones by the Canadian military, .... First Nations in Saskatchewan have been particularly affected by the fires this week, with some entire communities evacuated and occasionally trapped by road closures due to unsafe conditions.... 

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